


Sleeping Together

by Good_Evening



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: 6000 Years of Slow Burn (Good Omens), Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Angst, Awkward Tension, Aziraphale Has a Penis (Good Omens), Bottom Crowley (Good Omens), Comedy, Courtship, Crowley Has A Vulva (Good Omens), Crowley Has a Penis (Good Omens), Fluff and Angst, Historical References, Hurt/Comfort, Idiots in Love, Ineffable Idiots (Good Omens), M/M, Multi, Mutual Pining, Oral Sex, Slow Build, Slow Burn, Top Aziraphale (Good Omens)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-13
Updated: 2020-11-24
Packaged: 2021-03-02 01:54:04
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 39,338
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23607106
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Good_Evening/pseuds/Good_Evening
Summary: “I’m so tired, Crowley,” Aziraphale whispered, “I wish I could sleep like you do.”Seconds tripped by awkwardly, time warped into minutes.“You can,” Crowley’s throat was dry, “I mean, I wouldn’t move, if you did.”For a moment, he prayed. Crowley prayed that the darkness meant something different: for it to be his hand and not the coat Aziraphale gripped so tightly, head on his shoulder to simply rest because it was preferable, that he was with him simply because he wanted to be.The Lord had not granted Crowley's prayers in a very long time, he thought, if She ever had.-Crowley knows exactly what he wants. Aziraphale pretends not to know what he means, and for sixty centuries, at that. That is, how and when, and even why, does one pose the question, "Will you sleep with me?"
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 19
Kudos: 104





	1. From Eden to Paradise

**Author's Note:**

> Dum spiro spero  
> While I breathe, I hope

#  **In a Tree--Not** ** _the_** **Tree--on the Shores of Eden’s Lake - A Very, Very,** ** _Very_** **Long Time Ago**

Crawly.

 _Crawly_.

They may not have remembered their name, pre-Fall, but surely it had nothing to do with slithering, nevermind how they might have liked coiling up, now quite comfortably settled in the crook of a tree and watching with undemonic nonchalance--even enjoyment--as Adam and Eve explored their paradise. And, naturally, each other.

Crawly had never witnessed pleasures of the flesh. Asmodeus had yet to earn the badges that would soon be associated with the title, Prince of Lust. This was _Pre-lust_ , baby. Satan was throwing titles around as frantically as He’d flown through the Great and Terrible Ether between Eden and Hell. Even the Big S can fret. Milton got that one right, although he left out the fact of Crawly being chucked back out on the forest floor.

Crawly had wings. They could have flown.

Well, if one falls into Eden, do they get a fresh start? Crawly didn’t think so. Adding to the general post-Fall confusion was the fact that they happened to be Satan's very own chosen vessel of corruption. Crawly had no idea what warranted this, but if havoc, Head Office was determined to wreak, a wreaking, there would be.

_Get up there and make some trouble._

In regards to Armageddon, it was a timestamp rather than a goal. It had to happen… eventually. There was no hand-wringing hope to make it a slog, waiting to see who would win when both sides believed themselves justified in every way. In an Ineffable universe, everything is exactly as it's meant to be. Any problems along the way are largely trivial, but Crawly had yet to have any problems.

Well, since the Fall.

They found sunlight rather pleasant on these new scales, and the gentle sway of the branches rocked them into a sort of lull. Perhaps they would try sleeping. Adam and Eve certainly seemed to enjoy it, seeing as it took up the better part of a third of their day and there had only been one, thus far.

Crawly enjoyed watching, also, the entourage of angels dutifully intervening in the couple’s activities, offering Heavenly delights that smelled offensively of ambrosia. Their utter confusion about God’s newest additions to Her family, and unflagging obedience in serving them, was nothing short of comical. Gabriel seemed the least interested, already fanatical about the revised bureaucratic structure quickly formalizing in Heaven, a structure in which creatures created apparently to do nothing but enjoy themselves had no place.

The little things were nice, they'd found out. Crawly increasingly enjoyed everything there was about Adam and Eve and what they got up to, perhaps anticipating their innovations with more than curiosity. Even if it was undemonic of them to in any way hope that things worked out for the couple despite the meddling, Crawly was sure God would not create such defenseless beings--their teeth were so _small_ , their bellies so _soft_ \--purely to be corrupted. Crawly knew nothing of DEATH, yet. Crawly knew very little at all.

This would, of course, become partly their purpose in the very long life spread out for them. A sort of benign ignorance. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. Back to Adam and Eve.

They were bathing, now. He splashed her, she splashed back, and the water splashed both of them, since everything in Eden still had a will of its own and water knew nothing of vengeance. Yet.

Another angel checked in, now and again, a little on the twitchy side. The hand-wringing type. The type to take orders on faith but stress, nevertheless, about the consequences, and someone Crawly found, still in general ignorance of what Evil would elaborate on itself, alarmingly _good_. Even for angels. This angel was not a tiger lily like Gabriel or the thorned beauty of a rose like Michael. This angel was… soft. Crawly couldn’t quite grasp him (he did seem to have taken to the male model). Curiosity, ever the path to damnation, led them down the trunk and toward the edge of the lake.

They coiled there, perhaps a little too close, drawn again to the radiant laughter of Eve as Adam hefted her up and brought them both down into the water with a mighty splash.

“They do get along, don’t th--”

“ _OH my goodness!_ "

The angel jumped away from them, fist at his heart, still grasping this whole 'blood pressure' thing that Crawly, as a serpent, had naturally mastered.

“Do calm down,” they said mildly. The angel did, for the moment obedient regardless of understanding.

Crawly continued to relate.

“Oh, I’m so sorry, I didn’t see you there, erm…” He looked them up and down, tail to snout, “Are you…?”

“A snake. One of Her first additions to Eden,” Crawly sniffed, inasmuch as serpents sniff, which was more the swipe of a long, purple tongue. The angel quieted, eyes again on the humans. Humans.

“What do you think they’re doing?” Crawly asked.

“I’m told it’s ‘playing.’ The Lord said, ah, it would be good for them to get to know each other. To build friendship, you know."

"I don't have friendsss, angel," Crawly said distantly.

The angel would have argued then, since everyone and thing in Eden was more or less friends with one another, but Eve wrapped her arms around Adam’s neck and pulled their lips together, and the angel’s rapt attention left Crawly a little taken aback.

“Is that ‘playing?’ Seems rather aggressive...”

He wrung his hands.

Crawly appraised him, wondering what could be so dangerous about ‘playing’ that he stood guard as though manning the gate, itself. Drowning certainly wasn’t a thing DEATH had added to the list. There was no list. HE and God were still hashing that out.

“That’s ‘kissing.’ It’s a bonding mechanism.” He smiled a little nervously. “Newlyweds and all, they’re supposed to get to know each other a little bet--oh my.”

Eve had twined her legs around Adam as he pulled her up from the water, pushing her against a rather conveniently placed rock and thrusting. She moaned ecstatically, fingers locked in his hair as they rolled against one another.

“Kissing entails _all that?_ " Crawly’s eyes bugged. "Bit much, if you ask me,"

“No, no,” the angel corrected them, “there's uh, there’s more to it. That is to say, lots of bonding to happen. They _are_ the first couple, after all.”

“The first one?” Crawly pronounced. “Does She intend to make more?”

The angel was silent. The waves waved, the wind wound, and Adam and Eve got down like two teenagers in one of their mothers’ cars.

“It’s not mine to say. Or anyone’s,” he added quickly. Crawly turned to him. “If the Almighty decides that,” he wiggled his fingers at the two lovers, now jostling like the chassis of a Cadillac, “ _that_ is necessary, then it is. Like me. Or you.”

“I’m necessary?” Crawly tried the words out.

Anydemon could have taken their place, they were sure, but there was no telling what Infernal wisdom placed them there. The angel turned to them, brow drawn up.

“Of _course_ you are! Who else would--would--”

“... crawl?”

“Precisely! Who would do exactly as you do?”

Crawly scoffed, “Anyone could do as I do, the two of them could do as I do if they, if they did what they’re doing now. On the ground, that is.”

Eve shrieked as if to agree and the angel winced, but he struggled valiantly to keep his attentions in Crawly’s direction.

“I don’t… know,” this would also be a theme--an important theme--throughout the angel’s equally long life, “but I’m sure She has big plans for you."

“You, too, then,” Crawly agreed with an air of certainty.

“Yes. Me, too.”

Silence settled between them as Eve reached her climax, and Adam shortly thereafter. She poked and prodded him, but the gift of multiple orgasms had already been designated. Somewhat grumbling, she dragged them both on the shore for the sun to cheerfully dry them off and there, comfortable as one could be anywhere in the Garden, she fell asleep in the crook of his arm. Moments passed and there was nothing more out of them. Even the wind gentled its play with her hair.

“I like that,” Crawly said, laying their head on a coil of tail, “I like that they do that.”

“Sleeping?”

“Yes,” they nodded, “but… together. I think that’s my favorite thing they do together.” They watched the gentle rise and fall of Eve’s shoulder, Adam’s chest where her hand lay, fingers splayed and warm and holding as much of him as she could. “I should like to try it, one day,” Crawly said, “once things are… once there’s less work to be done.”

“Work?” the angel inquired.

Realizing the mistake in a flash of panic, Crawly scrambled to think of some sort of excuse, some non-Infernal excuse, to glide through this without exposing any of their master’s plan.

“Well, you know. Serpents have to, have to serp, lots of smells to smell, nests to nest. God’s Design, is, erm, magnificent? After all...” they laughed a snake’s laugh, which is more the wheeze of a stoma.

“Yes,” the angel agreed, not taking his eyes off of the couple. “Would you… like to try it?” he asked, not looking down. He twiddled his fingers, he chewed his cheek.

Crawly glanced up from the ground,

“Try what?”

“Sleeping. They do it so much, it must be one of the better...”

“Is it up to angels to try human things?” Crawly wondered aloud.

The angel quickly backpedaled,

“It’s, it’s not as if there’s any rule against it, and they seem so _happy_. I would… I would love to learn more about them. I do love them,” he said in a rush of breath, smiling like the sun, “I would love to love as they love each other.”

“Ah.”

Crawly awaited a follow-up. There wasn't one.

“... the three of you?”

Again, the angel backpedaled,

“No! They’re _married_ , I couldn’t just, just,”

“But you could do some of that with _me_ ,” they elaborated, getting a taste for the idea.

The angel’s eyes, bluer than the first waters, themselves, could not rest on one thing. They darted between the couple, Crawly, the trees, and the sky as if waiting for Gabriel to pop out and demand he do paperwork. Tabletwork.

“...”

“Sorry, what was that?”

“I already said I--yes. Yes, I would like to try sleeping. With you.”

Unbeknownst to them, Crawly would replay the first utterance of these words for the rest of Eternity, but at the moment, the novelty of the idea, and the lack of carnal complications, was inviting enough. They uncoiled and slithered over to a tree. Not too far from the couple that they couldn’t keep watch, not too open to others’ eyes that the angel might be caught sleeping on the job. 

This was, in fact, the first time anyone had ever slept on the job. It would become one of the Lord’s favorite moments to recount, first to a clearly disgusted and bewildered Gabriel, and later to Her Son, who would listen so many times, even Patience could not have dammed His pleas for Her to stop.

“May I have your…”

“Oh, excuse me, Aziraphale, Principality, pleased to--”

“No, no, your _arm_ _,_ angel, give me your arm.”

“Oh. Right. I’ll just,”

Aziraphale haltingly laid his head against the tree as Crawly slid over him, resting their head on his chest. White wings enfolded them, further shielding them from view. Aziraphale found himself relaxing--the very first time he’d ever relaxed--under the weight of another creature. His arms drew over the serpent’s spine and pulled them closer.

“ _Ngk_ ,”

“Oh, is that alright?”

“No, no, don’t mind me, just, ah, adjusting, is all.”

“Right then, shall we, erm…”

Crawly closed their eyes, slowed their breathing. Sleep, they found, comes quite naturally to a snake. Aziraphale listened to the gentle patter of their heart lag even further, until it was barely noticeable: a whisper against his own heart, which for the immortal life of him he could not seem to control.

Sleep doesn’t come easily to Principalities. Something about the nature of a guardian. He contented himself with watching Crawly sleep, thinking perhaps one day, once he’d sorted out all the trivialities of this corporation, the serpent could pay him back. He relaxed further into the tree. In the comfortable lull, he stretched out his wings, the tips trembling with little frissons of relaxed pleasure before folding back around them protectively.

His feathers stroked lightly over Crawly’s scales, eliciting a blissful hum that he easily returned. Yes. Even if he hadn’t quite mastered ‘sleeping,’ yet, this was nice. Crawly was nice. He hoped they’d meet again soon. It was the very first prayer the Lord truly heard.

Of course, he didn’t know the details that his hope would entail.

**SoHo, London - Two Days after The Last Day on Earth**

The trouble with angels is, and this is not something they find troubling, which is perhaps the more troubling, that they don’t tend to see the forest for the trees. A demon sees nothing but trees. Trees in the way, trees to fell, to climb, to shove into wood chippers like so many Prosperity Gospel evangelists, but when you’re managing from Heaven, Management is always Right. Lacking that coolness to any extent places the straw that breaks the camel’s back. It takes grace, a little arrogance in the other direction, to write off the little things.

In this respect, crouching over a slightly-too-golden-brown choux puff (with an expression like that of Michael casting the Fallen into Hell) is not a very angelic thing for Aziraphale to do. Nor is it terribly demonic of Crowley not to care that the waiter forgot his order. The trivialities of this particular restaurant, where they have come to celebrate the First Brunch of the Rest of Their Lives, mean nothing to him. He hasn’t bothered hiding his smile since the first course.

“To think that the quality slipped so quickly in the past decade just, _ohh_ , they never should have fired DuBlanc, I told you, I said, _If that man leaves, may God have mercy, because I will not!"_

Crowley introduced Aziraphale to Yelp in 2010. While this didn’t earn him a commendation, if Hell really understood the vengeance a Principality could wreak on unsuspecting cafés, and the human suffering that could result, they might’ve at least shortlisted him. Because Aziraphale does not _do_ computers, he dictates his reviews. Crowley can spend hours typing them up, lightly suggesting that they actually address what went wrong instead of submitting an unabridged manifesto of threats.

“You ordered the same thing you did last time. Every time. Why don’t you switch it up?” he asks from a comfortable, serpentine sprawl, the wire bistro chair fearfully bending to his will. His head cocks, his brow lifts.

Aziraphale’s cheeks flush the color of his strawberry mousse.

“It’s their best pastry! It’s the principle.”

“Oh great and terrible Principality,” Crowley croons, “please spare this place and we shall praise thy name,”

“ _Crowley!_ ”

He snaps his fingers and his hand falls to the table, to the side of Aziraphale’s plate and the now perfectly golden pastry. The angel’s dimples wink. Crowley pretends _he’s_ not smiling (at least not as much as he really is) and Aziraphale whispers,

“Thank you, my dear."

He rests his hand casually on his companion’s, as though it were a habit six thousand years old.

It would take a doctorate in physics to explain how fast Crowley’s neurons jolted through those six thousand years of rare touches and lingering glances.

_Are we here? Is this it?_

When Aziraphale finally pulls away to eat and a little bit of cream and powdered sugar smear on his lips, he shuts down. His hand burns. His face burns

Burning is pretty demonic, right? Let’s not worry about context. We’ll leave that to Crowley, who is fast closing on the title of Most Anxious Individual, directly after Ibrahim Mohamed Solih, the president of the ever-shrinking Maldives, and Donald Trump's accountants.

Well, what, since the invention of flirtation on a particularly lovely day in the Garden, does it mean when two entities continue their Arrangement after the stakes have fallen like so many towers of cards? Crowley knows how to tempt, how to wile, how to needle out which restaurant Aziraphale really wants to go to after hours of pouting. He does not, however, know the answer to the question now facing all Ethereal and Infernal beings:

What next?

He had a plan to run away. Crowley was generally one for escapism, given good company, but Aziraphale has always taken the bull by the horns, rendering his sweet and simpering composure a ruse that had taken Crowley ten seconds of their meeting to see through.

Only two days and the very course of existence had changed. God had never actually disclosed Her true Ineffable Plan, and the Great one, She seemed to have lied about from the get-go. The sun rose on the second day, indifferent to Crowley’s nerves, to the night he and Aziraphale spent parsing out Agnes Nutter’s teasing hint.

“There is nothing we haven’t been able to surmount, together, my dear,” Aziraphale calmly told him as he paced his apartment in agony over more Questions, always more.

He hadn’t _meant_ to Fall, as he’d said before. His life, looking back, is unbelievable. Even asking about the Fallen, “Can you fault ‘em for wondering, though? What these humans are really all about?” was worthy of Eternal Damnation. Not that he hadn’t gotten the hang of it. Crowley is as wily as Aziraphale pretends--pretended, now, though, innit?--to describe to his superiors. Simply because he’d never been on the short end of a temptation and couldn’t know the particularities doesn’t mean he’s not on the money. Crowley was an exemplary demon until Aziraphale came around with his little lunch dates, his taste in wine.

He found himself more and more intoxicated, the closer they got, throughout the centuries. Of course he knew alcohol had very little to do with his pursuit since that first date in Rome. It took almost another two thousand years of Aziraphale lying to his face before breaking him with six little words in 1967. Hope isn’t passive, it’s vicious. Voracious. Hope has the pounds-per-square-inch bite force of an alligator with a grudge, and it never let Crowley go.

There should be no hoping for an angel, no prayer for a demon, in a world where everything is as it should be, or was.

Nowadays, it’s anybody’s guess.

Letting his guard down. Buying _trinkets_. There was even a particular drunkenness he entertained when the angel would have nothing to do with him-- _foul fiend!_ and all--that was something between maudlin and spiteful. A lot of drinking alone, the occasional blond or blonde (awful language, French). A lot of hangovers without anyone there to remind him he could miracle his problems away, except for The Big One.

Well, not the _Fall_ one, not the What-Is-God-Really-Playing-at-Here one, although for Crowley’s purposes, that and his proximity to Aziraphale are one and the same. He allowed himself a hint of optimism, there, and look where it’s got him! Cloud nine. His whole body is tingling numb.

Still, it more or less acts as the centrifugal force of that alligator spinning its prey to break every bone and ounce of resistance, if we’re sticking to that metaphor. How he _pines,_ poor creature, with every broken bone in his body. Bent to Aziraphale's will. He’s spent the better part of six thousand years ever more closely, more rapidly, more catastrophically orbiting an angel seemingly out of his league: target of his agitation, affection, insufferable attraction.

Every second is a reward. Any restaurant, any bickering match, any reason at all to meet up. Cheating on the toss for Edinburgh. Standing close enough to know his scent.

_Fine, I'll see what I can do._

_I’ll give you a lift. Anywhere you want to go._

_To the world_.

And Aziraphale _knows_ , his mind screams at him, that not talking to him for the rest of Eternity would be a betrayal worse than death. No hiding that, not now. Never again, not when the angel's blinding, guiding light (guiding him into every action, every favor!) leaves him stupid, vulnerable, out in the open. Uncomfortable for a snake, when shadows offer comfort, to have them blasted away by a single smile.

Aziraphale, with his mutinous love of humanity, a love he hid from _God, Herself._ So blindingly, bafflingly, enigmatically... kind. Love in all directions. Love of, of different kinds. Maybe. Assuredly. Unrequited hand-holding, at the very least. Crowley missed the first move--he’s been nothing but first moves since none of them seemed to stick. Where are they, now?

He pauses before they rise to leave the café, looks down at his thumbs with a frown like a crack in marble as blood rushes to his cheeks.

Here is Aziraphale, quietly pleased as they walk back to his shop through the park.

Here is Crowley, electrified, terrified, cramming himself as close to the angel’s side as their protons will permit.

Here is the key, turning, and Aziraphale talking about some wine or another, and then they’re in the parlor and Crowley still feels that tingle on his hand like someone’s gone and chopped off a finger he never knew he had.

Aziraphale, of course, follows his daily rituals as if nothing has changed. Crowley is Big-Picturing himself into an aneurysm as the angel plops down with a book, turns page after page in the quiet room. Humanity goes about as it always has, and now that their superiors won’t bother the two of them with paperwork for a good millennium, Crowley officially succumbs to the panic. This is his life.

Well, it occurred to him on the bus, and especially that night, then at the Ritz, but… his brain makes the sound of a screwdriver clanging on cement.

It’s the Arrangement! Literally _just_ the Arrangement. Ecstasy! Someone make a toast.

Ah, they’ve done that.

Little touches, glasses of wine that appear in hand whenever you stretch, the brush of fingers benign and familiar. That’s all there is left. His home is where Aziraphale is. He doesn’t know which way to move but forward, and much like not knowing what to do after the Fall, he doesn’t know which way forward is. For the second time, after a simple lunch at a café Aziraphale magnanimously decided to forgive, Crowley is faced, unarmed, with a life he never thought he’d have, now handed to him. Quite literally handed to him, as he was handed a sparkling glass of 1897 Veuve Clicqot within seconds of crossing the threshold of the bookshop.

“Are you lost, dear boy?” Aziraphale teases over the worn binding of a first-edition _Decameron_ , salacious for his usual tastes. Set in Florence. Was it Florence, they were, for the Plague? No, Milan. Definitely Milan.

The back of this champagne is dry as char.

"No, no, no, just thinking.” Crowley shakes his head, brushes his knuckles on his vest. His draughts deepen. Thinking is the enemy, kill it with liver. Alcohol. Liver?

“Penny for your thoughts?”

_I’m in love with you._

He jolts and Aziraphale lofts a brow.

Crowley sniffs, “Nothin’ worth sharing.”

“Come, now, stop pouting.”

He runs a hand through his hair and a heaving sigh burbles up before he can stop it. Aziraphale tilts his chin with a little purse to his lips that makes Crowley inwardly flinch, as if every other thousand eyes of his friend’s True Form were trained on him with all celestial intent, and recognizing at once his inner turmoil from a fourth-dimensional view. That look.

“No, no, don’t look at me like that,” he whines.

“Well.” Aziraphale flips the cover shut with an damning _thwap_ and rises from his chair.

Crowley’s head falls back on the couch and wobbles a bit. Always at Aziraphale’s mercy, (or, more often than not, lack thereof) he’s left to a torturous train of thought as the angel winds past the shelves to the little nook with his desk.

“What are you doing, angel?” he begs quietly. A high, sharp hum answers him, an obvious sign of irritation, of I’m-ignoring-you-look-can’t-you-see-I’m-ignoring-you.

When Aziraphale returns, Crowley’s drained his glass and it dangles from his limp hand over the side of the couch. When Aziraphale returns, his eyes are wide, as if he’s not sure Crowley’s ready to hear whatever he has to say to him. 

When Aziraphale returns, Crowley could hardly cut the tension between them with a flaming sword.

“Look, I’m sorry, just, not the, not the post-Apocalypse I thought it would be,” he mumbles. Aziraphale passes by his chair with a breeze and Crowley stiffens. “Let’s go for a walk, then, clear the air. I didn’t mean to ruin your one-man book club.”

Aziraphale sits down next to him.

Crowley’s entire body snaps like a rubber band with a slight squeak he’ll never admit to having made. He coils up on the far end of the couch as if preparing for an attack.

“I’ll give you anything you want, just stop…”

When he gets a good look at Aziraphale’s face, there’s an unexpected brightness to his eyes. His lashes flutter as his gaze darts up, down, coy: the same way he might look if he were about to ask for a miracle in exchange for a jug of wine and a night pointing at the stars.

_That must have been yours,_

_No, Andromeda was Gabriel, quite the slow burn._

He smells sea salt. Musk. He feels the rock of a boat across five thousand years.

“Crowley,” he starts, hand doing a little half-attempted wave towards Crowley’s knee, which is currently trying to fold up into his chest like a collapsible chair. Aziraphale smiles gently. “My dear, I know it’s been… difficult. Waiting for the other shoe to drop, and all. Not that they’ll think they have any way of, of permanently disposing of us,” there’s a light tremble in his voice as he thinks of what would have happened if they’d been one iota less clever, “and you, well,” he stops. His tape runs out. 

After an uncomfortably long silence, he ducks his head and pulls a small box from behind him.

“Here. It might not be to your taste, but when I saw it, I thought, I thought of you. Erm.” He offers it. Crowley doesn’t move. “It’s for you,” Aziraphale assures, and gently taking Crowley’s hand, _again with the hands, he’s holding my hand oh, Go-Sa-his skin feels like a baby’s arse,_ he folds the box into his fingers. His very numb, tingling fingers.

Crowley short-circuits again.

“A, a gift. You got me a, you could’ve _ngk,_ with all… that.” He flicks his wrist and relaxes haltingly, an angular tension still gripping his shoulders like a frightened cat.

The box is far, _far_ too old. Kept together by millennia of miracles, its surface is smooth and concave as though someone used it as a worry stone. He opens it, blinks. He blinks. Aziraphale’s breath catches in his throat.

“You don’t… like it? I knew it, it was a terrible idea, it’s not the modern fashion, there’s nothing worse than getting a gift you’d only have to return, like giving a errand, here, let me,”

Before he can take the box back, Crowley’s already wearing its contents, staring at his index finger as if it might fall off. The box falls from his other hand and the angel catches it. If he thought he was numb after Aziraphale held his hand in the cafe, it was nothing compared to the creeping weightlessness overtaking his hand as it slowly rises to catch the light, gold and softly glinting. A ring. Aziraphale had gotten him a ring. A tiny golden snake, with tiny amber eyes, to be exact.

 _Would look nicer on the other finger,_ he thought, still staring at it, mouth hanging open the slightest degree. His fingers are fairly uniform. _Could slip it on when he’s not looking, just to see._

“Is that… is it too much?" Aziraphale breathes.

Crowley remembers he has vocal chords.

“No,” he growls, dangerously affected. He clears his throat, nods so his hair bobs. “Good um, good taste. I love it. Like it. It’s very…”

“Oh, thank Heaven!” They would have to work on that one, new positions considered. “I was so worried, there in the bazaar--did you know I’d been holding onto this since Tangier--”

Aziraphale stops, mouth open, that overwhelming cheer in his eyes flashing into something cagey, immediately steeled like the glimmer of a padlock. He rubs the box with his thumb in practiced circles as if he were trying to start a fire.

“Tangier,” Crowley repeats, a little tipsy.

“Never you mind!” Aziraphale startles him, hopping off the couch and patting down his slacks as though Crowley were emitting coal dust and not utter confusion.

“Tangier?”

“Ah--glass empty? Oh, let’s fix that, give it here, darling,”

“Oy, angel!”

Aziraphale disappears behind the corner without his glass and Crowley glances down at his ring, _his_ ring, dumbfounded. It’s become rather hard to think about anything but the bloody ring, how it glints, how the little eyes seem to follow the gaze and wink in rays of light. Tangier.

He inspects closer, leaning in only to bump his nose against another flute of champagne,

“Whass--”

“Celebration, dear boy! After the dinner, we...”

Aziraphale’s gaze is wild, desperate. He’s tensed like a hare out in the open, ready to bolt at the first sign of a fox. Wilderness metaphors aside, it is enough of a distraction to momentarily stall Crowley’s train of thought.

Their glasses clink without much fanfare. _To the world_ , indeed. Whereas that moment felt like a denouement to the Apocalyptic climax in their relationship, this is building again. The rumblings of another act. Crowley looks up and feels like he’s missing something, only to find blue eyes zealously trained on the ring.

He holds his knuckles up so it catches in the light again, watches its glare like the flames of hellfire.

“How old is it, then?” he asks, almost dreading the answer.

Aziraphale hums, turning away, fluffing pillows that cower into the right shape under the weight of his tension.

“Aziraphale, how long have you had this?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. It’s a trinket I thought you might--it’s nothing, it’s just,”

“Just what?”

A ring.

The champagne.

Crowley is mid-sip when he promptly spits, to Aziraphale’s indignation, all over the solid oak coffee table that survived without stains since Catherine the Great turned her eye on the Ottomans.

“Is this a--”

“I don’t know what you mean!”

The front door rattles with a ferocious knock.

“ **We’re closed!** ” They both shout, then look at one another.

The angel scrambles to his desk, then the hallway beyond. Crowley stumbles off the couch in pursuit. Aziraphale dashes around the bookshop, finding minor things to dust and straighten and fiddle with while actually knocking them over along the way.

“How long have you been sitting on this?” his voice echoes in the winding passageways. A tower of books not moved since he first stacked them there, two-hundred years before, threatens to topple.

“Perhaps you should come back later, I was just thinking of opening up--”

Crowley catches him on the shoulder around a bend, twisting him so that he’s pressed against a shelf and their chests are touching. It’s not as romantic as it seems. Both their backs are wedged against shelves and Aziraphale's only paused fleeing because he can no longer move. His eyes are golden, sharp, despairingly bright. Instead of holding up the ring, he presses it against Aziraphale’s palm, almost hissing at the sharp intake of breath--unnecessary breath--the angel takes.

“When, exactly, did you get this?” he implores.

Aziraphale meets his gaze with guarded affection, small smile pressed painfully into his face. Crowley’s lip trembles, his eyes glow.

“Please. Tell me, Aziraphale. When?”

He had no intention of letting his True Form slip through, least of all, the windows to his soul--or whatever demons have--but certain emotions are more powerful than others, more powerful even than the will he’s demonically required to utilize in shoving them down, deep and hard. He likes those words together. He allows himself to imagine freely exploring them, for once, ideally when Aziraphale’s not staring him down as though caught between wanting to comfort and closing the conversation. Needing to dominate.

Crowley almost swoons.

“Be honest with me,” he gulps, steadying himself by pressing their hands tighter, “what does this mean?”

The angel softens minutely. His hand rises, reaching for Crowley’s face.

“My dear, I--”

**KNOCK. KNOCK.**

Their heads whip to the side,

 _“We’re CLOSED!"_ They erupt, only to find their guest has appeared in front of them, blinking serenely at their intimate positions.

Dislodging themselves doesn’t occur to them, the shock of finding another Ethereal--Infernal?--presence too demanding of their shared brain cell. It takes a minor miracle to resume blood flow to the appropriate places.

“Aziraphale,” the presence greets, an angel, she seems to him. Rather than gold dust, she's smattered in silver.

“Crowley,” she says, a demon, she seems to him, although her teeth are all the normal length and there’s nothing in her posture that speaks to maiming of any sort.

“My name is Azrael.”

“Azrael,” they repeat numbly, sorting through the lengthy lists of Fallen and Not. She appears in neither. She’s older than dirt, quite literally, older certainly than Aziraphale. Crowley squints, then recoils as much as his position allows (which only pushes him further into the angel’s space).

“ _Nmph,_ ”

“Oh!”

She wiggles her hand a bit, inspects her nails,

“I assure you, my visit is purely business. The two of you are, ah, free agents, I’ve been informed.” She hazards a glance down at the ring shining brashly from Crowley’s finger. “Oh, congratulations!”

“It’s not like that!” Aziraphale exclaims. Crowley does _not_ whimper. “Oh, don’t you--just give me a moment,”

“I’m afraid I can’t,” she replies, knowing very well he wasn’t talking to her, and that maintaining their attention is a careful dance she’ll have to make. Her BOSS absolutely insisted on interrupting at this very moment, and she is silently wishing that she had waited long enough to ask HIM why. Perhaps avoid it, altogether.

“Well, erm, how may we be of--”

“We don’t work for you lot anymore, you know where the door is.”

“ _Crowley!_ ”

They bicker. She coughs. Crowley pokes a finger-- _the_ finger--into Aziraphale’s chest, and is promptly swatted down. He gasps.

They turn to her with fake smiles, as though she hasn’t heard their entire argument and has no need to ignore the fact that their chests are still touching when in fact, the bookshop, itself parted the corridor wide enough for them to part, as though to say, _I’m not getting into this one_.

“Business is still business. I’ve no intention of interrupting your honeymoon--” more bickering, “boys, please,” both of her hands splay at her sides, now, a noble effort to maintain composure and rein in her temper. Azrael has an _awful_ temper, when she gets going. “I've been asked to inform you that the offer’s still on the table.”

“What offer?” Crowley spits. Aziraphale glares at him, smiles at her,

“Yes, I’m afraid we--”

“Holodomor? The Great Leap Forward?” Zero recognition. _"T_ _he Black Plague?_ Where were you for that one?"

She glances between them, their feral smiles and wide eyes. Smart of her to prepare a speech then, hard to keep these boys on track, now that the pressure’s off. Not off of each other. Jesus, are their legs still touching? They _do_ know they’ve got company? Innocent company?

“I’m terribly sorry, you’ll have to remind me.”

She clucks, “Fine.” Let her cool slip a bit, there. She utilizes her lungs and, there, we go. Right as rain. “The humans are always getting themselves into one mess or another--in the name of progress or the opposite. Now and again, my BOSS has received an influx of souls too fast to, well, enjoy the workweek. With Pestilence enjoying a comeback and Famine in Yemen, HE was rather hoping you’d… well,” she eyes the ring, “lend a hand.”

Crowley blinks, realizing he’s forgotten his glasses, then looks down at Aziraphale, who is still pretending not to know what’s going on, or at least pretending at pretending not knowing decently well.

She gives them a minute. Utter silence.

“DEATH,” she says, “my BOSS is DEATH, and in HIS infinite…” she struggles on this one, “infinity, HE was wondering if you’d spend a little of your vacation down south and help out. It’s not as if you have anything better to do, right?”

Again, she takes in the ring, which is currently digging very hard into Crowley’s whitening fist.

“Any big plans since interrupting the Great one?”

Sensing that Crowley is about to speak, Aziraphale jumps at the chance to sa--

“NO. I mean yes, of course. Love to be of help. Not pledging allegiance, definitely just ah, assistance. Of the friendly kind. Good community relations, doing our part to, to,”

It’s clear that, though he’s interrupted the Narrator, Herself, Aziraphale has no idea where he’s going with this, and it’s devastatingly clear, both to Crowley and, somewhat less so, to Azrael, that he’s dodging something rather important in doing so.

“You want us to reap souls,” Crowley says. Aziraphale nods too animatedly, knocking his chin.

“Oh no,” she exclaims, her fingers delicately touching her heart, a caricature of indignation, “by no means, that’s up to the Big D, HIMSELF, no,”

Crowley snickers. Aziraphale nudges him far too gently in the ribs for his back to spasm so.

“What I’m proposing is," both of them flinch, "quite simply, that you, er, help them to hang on, as it were. Until HE can get to them. Never much trouble on HIS end, doing so, collecting on time and all, but ever since the Great Plan _you lot_ interrupted, he’s had… something of a backlog. Accounts we’ve had to sort out and too much overtime going around. Not really HIS thing, but HIS job, nonetheless. This is a favor, nothing more. And it will be returned in kind.”

“A favor, hmm?” Crowley says, clearly ready to rant.

Aziraphale has made himself a master of interruption, by now. He claps his hands together, considerably impeded from where they’re shoved into Crowley’s chest.

“We’d be delighted. Anything to get out of the house. Awfully slow with no, with no miracles, temptations and the like. When can we begin?”


	2. The Worst Possible Honeymoon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An dubious exchange of jewelry and hope, hope, hope.

**Rome, the Better Parts Therein - 41 CE**

He’d hoped, but that’s a long way from ‘prayed’ or, more agonizing, ‘expected.’ Crowley was blinded-sided to find Aziraphale in Rome, and now he couldn’t remember what he came here to do.

The Campus Martius was crowded and fragrant with festival traffic, all shining columns and colorful sculptures opening into a broad magazine lined with spectacular displays and beautiful people in gold-girdled robes. Crowley rather stood out in his all-black _toga pulla_. Even the barkeep at the oyster place had asked him who’d died.

Pax Romana was in full swing and Caligula had just been deposed after a reign as confusing as it was hedonistic. Don’t count that against Crowley, though. He was never present at the mad emperor’s indulgent parties and orgies, whispering in his ear. Aziraphale was in Rome long before, suggesting the next fun thing to do without necessarily considering how it would turn out for the people, or the taxation the world’s first and most infamous party barge might cost. Crowley had no complaints if it led the angel to the city and an unplanned rendezvous.

The Taurian games, chariot races held in honor of the Underworld, (how they made that connection, Crowley didn't know) prompted a wave of gambling and drunken debauchery which, commendations trickling in left and right for hostile takeovers of indigenous peoples, Crowley enjoyed as a kind of vacation. At least vicariously as much as a certain Other enjoyed. While it's largely true that Evil never sleeps, frankly because Evil has a heck of a time closing its eyes in case Greater Evils are afoot--which they always are--the demon Crowley is in many respects an exception.

With War doing her work in Gaul and Pannonia and North Africa and so on, management was content. Crowley had very little to worry about being caught doing, or not doing, anything at all.

“The celebration was marvelous. I can’t believe they poured that much money into it but I won’t disagree, it’s all lovely, isn't it?”

No answer came. Aziraphale tilted his head.

That look had gotten Crowley to pay for their meal. It had gotten his tacit nod of agreement to attend an orgy where he planned to slip to the side, quietly consuming as much wine as the senator hosting could conceivably afford. Aziraphale, as he had described in lurid detail, intended to sample exotic fruits, the senator’s son, and even his wife.

He did not respond well to the ensuing judgement of his character.

“Yes, the parade was quite…” Crowley struggled for the appropriate words, “elaborate. Elephants, and all. They don’t really belong on a cobbled street. Not like you can give ‘em horseshoes. No hooves.” He paused. “Do elephants have hooves? No, they’ve toes. Awful big nails, that's right. Right?"

“Oh, would you look at that!”

Aziraphale dashed toward a jewelry display shining with silver necklaces and gems of all types. Coral brooches bearing the image of Claudius lined the first row, patriotic for the new emperor, if nothing else. The piece he admired was a silver ring topped with wings held aloft over delicate tails winding in the Celtic style. Imported, of course.

It was one-of-a-kind, expensive, and undeniably froo-froo. It was very _him_.

Fawning falsely over other pieces, his eyes trained twice, three, four times back on the ring. A glance in Crowley’s direction preceded a pout and tap of his purse, which was low after a day of drinking even before they’d met up. They were feeling good. Crowley fed off that feeling, tottering after him, just a little behind.

“Can’t argue the craftsmanship,” he agreed, although jewelry was not strictly his style, these days, interrupting the flow of his elaborately draped robes. “Probably came from the colonies. Conquer enough Slavs, you’re bound to get something fancy out of it. Noricum, now, more Celts coming up.”

Aziraphale ignored him.

“I’ll get it for you,” he said, bored by the elaborate displays of wealth and their cost in carnage.

Crowley had been to Gaul, to most of the conquered lands if not to wreak havoc then to sample the local wines. He’d bought his glasses in China. Souvenirs for Aziraphale in Cairo, or wherever work took him. Well-traveled, he didn’t tend to stick around anywhere, having nothing and no one to call a proper ‘home.’ He largely did as he pleased. Sloth and its attendants, ennui and depression, had yet to work their magic on him, although lately he hadn’t been working so much as attending comedic plays at local amphitheaters and only performing the occasional temptation on those who mildly inconvenienced him.

Aziraphale’s pout flipped. He pursed his lips to subdue the coquettish smile, stepped aside for Crowley to assess the value of the ring and haggle rather unsuccessfully with the merchant. Observing his difficulty, Aziraphale executed a small curse--nothing deadly, mind--that every other eyelash the man grew would fall into his eye. This was far more diabolical than a death sentence, or even an audit.

He struggled to fit the ring on his reddening index finger until Crowley intervened, sliding it off with ease and asking, quite plainly,

“Do you want it resized?”

Another frivolous miracle at the ready. Crowley began to think he had a disease.

Infatuation is, of course, pathological.

“Absolutely not!” Aziraphale’s fingers splayed over his heart. “Think of what it would do to the design, it’s perfect as is, don’t touch a thing!”

Crowley touched as much as he pleased. He’d bought it, after all. That was the reason, and only that. He turned the silver in his hand, scowling a little, watching it glint as Aziraphale watched him. He grabbed the angel’s ring finger and it glided on with ease.

“There,” he sniffed as he dropped the soft, warm hand from his clammy fingers, “can’t see how you didn’t figure that one out on your own.”

Crowley could not withstand the stare Aziraphale ensnared him in then. It penetrated his glasses, the hoax of his indifference, even his clothes, as though at threat of losing his _dignitas_ in a crowd of three thousand ill-smelling city dwellers.

In a blink, the market failed to exist. They were alone.

He hadn’t stopped time but it diverted nonetheless for a second, or an eternity, as it does when certain things become meaningful without announcing what they are.

He felt starlight, and wind, and a shoulder against his.

They trained their eyes over their shoulders, in that moment prey to the kind of vulnerability that invites the discrimination of hereditary enemies. For a dangerous second, they forgot that’s what they were.

Aziraphale gazed thoughtfully at the ring where it surrounded a small part of him with a weight he enjoyed. His voice was small, private,

“Thank you, my dear. I shall have to return the favor.”

“How about this, angel?”

Aziraphale turned his head toward one of Crowley’s more mischievous smiles. He’d draped a rather elaborate fascinus necklace across his torso. The childish glee he took in gesturing with the winged phallus would not have given a proper angel a contact high of silliness. It rather evoked old memories. Crowley had always looked good in jewelry: the goldtones illuminating red hair and olive skin. Aziraphale girded himself against an onslaught of his previous corporations like the front of a phalanx, although certain memories penetrated his defenses.

Chains and chains and golden diadems topped with enamel and jewels, more jewelry than clothing, really, but when in Egypt, do as the Egyptians do.

“Aziraphale,” he goaded, “ _oh, this is simply lovely, don't you think?_ ” came a falsetto of the angel’s pleading voice. He batted his eyelashes, sliding his fingers up and down the veined fascinus even as he sidestepped a passing cart, pushing them closer together. _"I_ _t would mean ever-so much, dear boy!_ "

Upon sight of the angel’s upturned brow, Crowley pinched his tongue between his teeth in a provocative grin. Aziraphale turned and concealed his blush, slowed his heartbeat as well as his thoughts.

“Aw, come on, angel,” Crowley whined, “s’just joking. Listen, howbout we go to that… that place with the stuffed dates you mentioned?"

Aziraphale whipped back to him, beaming,

"Decimus'?"

"Anywhere, angel," Crowley said, quiet among the passing crowd, "anywhere you want to go."

**Marib, Yemen - Present Day**

Crowley and Aziraphale find themselves in the high desert of Yemen, under the shade of an alien-looking Dragon tree. This was, of course, not the desired outcome.

Azrael is nowhere in sight. Aziraphale pats at his head to find a cream turban supported by a pastel blue alqaweq, with the traditional jambiya blade hanging from his girdle. Its long, silver sheath sports sapphires and intricate inscriptions. HELPER, reads one, INFIDEL, reads another, unnecessary commentary on his freelancing. He huffs. Not anything he would have made for himself, but altogether fine enough quality that he can’t complain.

Azrael cobbled together for Crowley a long black zina that touches his toes, with gold thread and amber ornaments sewn into the elaborate stitching that match in color to something else. He blushes. A red and black headscarf that draped to his shoulder, concealing his thoroughly foreign red locks. Women’s clothes are certainly becoming on his slender frame, Aziraphale has to admire, eyes flashing with amusement at the golden baubles hanging from his ear. It’s been a long time coming, matching that gold. The precise gold of his eyes, Aziraphale now confirms with secret delight.

Crowley looks at his arms, turns them over to hear the bangle of bracelets, sneering at the leather shoes on his feet with their colorful cloth stitching. Finally, he pulls at the front of his blouse with a quiet gasp.

“Too nosy. Don’t like her.”

“I thought she was perfectly pleas--”

Aziraphale takes a closer look at Crowley’s shuffling, the disgruntled fold of his arms pulling the fabric tighter across his--

“Ah. Well, she got a bit carried away, it seems,”

“Carried _away?!”_

Crowley stomps, whipping his headscarf around so the tassels flop against his mouth. He whacks at them with his hand, fuming, before straightening the whole thing to his preference. Aziraphale hazards a curious glance at the subtle curve of his chest, the inward dash of his waist, or, more correctly, _her_ waist.

“My dear, would you prefer…”

“Whatever,” Crowley says, hoarse and displeased and thoroughly in need of a drink which, he realizes with some agony, he will not be able to acquire without a miracle. “ _She_ is fine, appearances and all.”

Well. Aziraphale and the lady Crowley, in all her beauty and fury, descend the rocky plateau toward a town that has clearly suffered a recent bombardment. Pastures dotted with eruptions of earth like astroblemes greet them as they near crumbled buildings, the dirt path ceding to pitted stone.

“It’s all very grim,” Aziraphale says.

“Wouldn’t be much call to HIS service, otherwise,” she mutters, still irritated, still scratching at the ill-apportioned corporation Azrael stuffed her into.

With a sigh, and sure of no glances from a nearby shepherd, she adjusts herself, her height shrinking to something believable, just under Aziraphale’s, in fact. Not since the start of the War, had she looked quite like this. The perfect height to rest her head on his shoulder, to tilt her chin up for a brief and chaste ki--

“Heads up. Townies incoming.”

“ _As-salam-alaykum,_ ”

“Erm, and to you,” Aziraphale replies to the severely wrinkled and weatherbeaten man who greets him. His goats follow in a stricter line than one would expect of goats, what may be his sons guiding them with switches. "Would you happen to know of an inn somewhere nearby?”

The man looks at him, then looks at Crowley, who plays with her scarf in a bored fashion that men, unfortunately, often perceive as flirtatious. He points at the broad expanse of mountainous desert they came from, obviously confused.

“Right! Thanks ever so much for the help, come now, my dear, let’s get you to town. Women, you know, always in need of, of,” Aziraphale, of course, has very little idea of what women want. Barely more than the average male, in fact, but if one were to examine his history at discreet gentlemen’s clubs, it would come as no surprise.

They wend their way through tight streets toward a sort of bazaar, or what was once one, where Crowley watches limping children with collarbones too prominent, cheeks too gaunt, and thin mothers leaning morosely against doorways carved into the hillside.

“S’pose HE’S in dire need of help, if this is the case all over. Following the news, seems so.”

The attempt at conversation doesn’t land.

Crowley needs something to do with her hands, so to stop picking at the tassels, she nearly twines her ringed finger with one of Aziraphale’s and remembers just in time to stop herself.

 _Not now_ , she insists.

 _Maybe never_ , she laments.

Already executing several miracles, Aziraphale ensures that bread appears in baskets that have not seen a single grain in months, allows a devious youngster to snip his purse free, and brings on a light rain to settle the dust. Crowley, not to be outdone, staves off the town’s hunger pangs with a slight drop in their metabolisms, after which she collapses against the dry, stone well. She pours her head in her hands and Aziraphale falls to her side.

“What is it, my dear, was that too much?”

Onlookers regard them carefully. Those in rich dress don’t often pass through, unguarded, nevermind weeping ones.

“No,” Crowley croaks, “jus’... just find me a room.” She grits her teeth. “ _Now_. Please, angel.”

She goes quiet.

Aziraphale purses his lips, rises, and softly inquires to the first man he can find, who points them in the direction of the house of the wealthiest man in town. Even the once-marvelous facade of his estate is pitted by bombings and blackened from numerous fires. He talks his way in through the door and up the stairs into a spareroom, where he finds a mat for sleeping, a chest for whatever they brought, (they would later miracle several wineskins) and a washbasin drier than the air.

“There, my dear,” he attempts peeling at Crowley’s hands where they still guard her face, but she swats him away with a weak growl.

Realizing that fighting this will in no way soothe her, he directs her to the mat and coaxes her into lying down. She immediately curls on her side, pulling the scarf tight across her eyes. Her breath quietly hitches.

“Darling, tell me what’s wrong,” Aziraphale coos, in the back of his mind still performing miracles. Fatter goats. Filling wells. Not enough to get them through the next season, but enough to prolong DEATH’S inevitable ride into town.

“Ca-can’t you feel it?” she hiccups, reaching out to clutch at Aziraphale’s tunic. He brushes his hand over her shoulder, tucks her head under his chin. The perfect fit, just as thought.

The impulse to brush his lips across her ear is so tempting, he briefly entertains the fantasy that it's intentional on her part.

This thought precedes a wave of shame so penetrating, he shivers with her.

“The, the _suffering,"_ she chokes, "the fear. These people, angel, they know HE’S coming, it’s just a matter of waiting it out. For Sa--Go--the bloody _kids_ know it.”

Her back quakes with sobs as she rocks into his chest, and Aziraphale wraps his arm around her more firmly, more certain of his role and what to do. A Principality guides. Comfort and support may not technically be in his job description, but he’s gotten rather good at it when it comes to this particular creature, of all Creation. Past arguments notwithstanding.

“We may have interrupted the Great Plan, but we’ve still roles to play,” he says vaguely.

“Doesn’t make it bloody _fair_. The kids, Aziraphale, I ha-haven’t felt anything like this sssince Milan,”

The Black Plague: before Pestilence turned in their crown for retirement. Well, perhaps more of a sabbatical. The feel of oncoming death is overwhelming, the smell of human fear and decay penetrates every sense. As a being of Love, an angel may sense many things, but Crowley’s lot is more sensitive to other wavelengths, other forces, and she could pretend all she liked that human suffering was simply another job, while she’d had the job, but things have changed, been opened. They can’t be called back.

Aziraphale hushes her when her sobs turn to chokes. She pulls at his tunic like she wants to climb him wholesale and nest in his turban. Her hands find their way to his face as she reveals hers, tears streaking through the dust blowing, always blowing bone-dry through the town. Aziraphale is reminded of the Flood.

“S’pose you’ll still say it’s Ineffable,” she says, ready to rise and pace to shake out her nervous energy. Her headscarf has begun to fall, red ringlets framing her face like the fires that ripped through this town, months ago. And still, its people persist. Still, Crowley rails against God’s design.

“It’s not really mine to say, anymore, is it? After all we’ve done?” he refrains from saying 'accomplished.' Nothing about this seems like accomplishment, business as usual, rather.

Averting an Apocalypse doesn’t redeem humanity of anything, only sets it back to its regular course as though evading charybdis only to be tossed to the next mutation of Poseidon’s trifling wrath. The gods do as they do. Crowley and Aziraphale continue to be themselves, whatever that means in the grand scheme of things, and subversion of the status quo or no, any alterations to Fate they’ve personally made seem reserved to their own. Adam saw to the rest.

“S’not right.” She wipes her nose on the sleeve of her black zina, the yellow embroidery darkening. “‘Course _She_ knows, She knows All there is n’ still, all this, all this, I mean, why not the Americans, eh? Why not the Saudis, or the Romans, or the British, or anyone else who’s traipsed through here since, since the bloody Queen of Sheba.”

Aziraphale hushes her, tucks her head back under his. He rather likes it there. The press of their bodies. Her legs huddling against his as he widens like the jaws of a snake, ready to swallow her sorrows whole. He’s mixing metaphors, here, and they’re getting far too political to salvage the conversation.

“We might not understand, but we’re here to help, aren’t we? Even if it’s just for a while, we can give them something.”

“It's not a life they’re living, Aziraphale, they’re barely surviving, they’re--”

“Azrael would not have asked if we could not do some Good,”

“Or Bad. Not like she’s on either side. Her BOSS never did care, one way or the other, all tallies in the End. S’a bloody game to HIM.”

He strokes her hair, studying her face while her eyes are cast down, glimmering with a painful beauty. She considers the ring on her finger. A devastating thought shadows her face, as though it would disappear in a puff of smoke and the dream of this morning would mean nothing in the nightmare of now. Aziraphale's chest twinges as she folds down again. Her back hitches once, silent. Her face shimmers, resplendent with tears, as she pulls up again to look him in the eye. Looking for sympathy, he doesn't know. All he knows is that she is perfect. She is his. The ring announces this, and thus, so too does her sadness fall to him, and all that is his, is blessed. Before he can stop himself, he pushes her scarf back ever so slightly, breath shallow and nervous, and places a chaste kiss on her cheek.

“There, there,” he says too quickly. This isn’t territory they’ve explored, and it’s not as if Crowley hasn’t noticed. His breath shudders across her skin and her talons stab into his chest.

Her body is shock-still, rosy face drained to a luminous white. 

“Not here,” she whispers, afraid to move, “I can’t. Don’t…”

“Of course, darling,” Aziraphale says, “anything you wish.”

Unbeknownst to him that this would set her off again, he then returns her to the safety of his arms, rocking with her rocks, absorbing the painful spasms of her shoulders, the wetness of her breaths on his chest.

-

After a long doze together on the floor, Crowley finally detaches her black claws from Aziraphale’s tunic. He miracles the scratches closed on his chest, summons some wine to lighten the mood, as she crawls to the cracked mirror in the corner to appraise the dried tears in tracks through the dust. With a bleak gaze, she takes in the richness of her clothes, then snaps her fingers with an awful _crack_ the likes of a thunderclap.

Nothing but the plain, black funeral garb of a peasant woman. Her hijab is loose around her shoulders. Aziraphale scoots the wash basin in front of her, wary, and she bends toward the water as though in prayer.

His sleeves fray at the mercy of his fingers, the blue alqawek in disarray. He glances at the door, its worn wood hundreds of years old, the whole town still somehow standing despite wars and wars. He never passed through, even given the chance. Rumors of Sheba’s decadence were tempting, but neither Heaven nor his trivialities sent him here, for whatever reason. Her voice draws his eyes to to the mirror, cracked, and cracked,

“I was here when the Romans invaded, you know. The Sabines. Saw it all."

Lines of dirt fall in brown rivulets from her forehead. Aziraphale knows not what to say, and so says nothing at all. She wrings out a dirty rag and for a minute, the only sound is that of water sloshing in the basin, drowning everything else.

“Beelzebub, zirself, handed me a medal for that one. Can’t imagine what zhe thought I was up to, certainly didn’t play the part of a centurion, never a fan of the armor, the whole,” she waves her hand listlessly above her head, “mohawk or whatever.” It droops to her lap, exhausted. “Forget the term.”

“That must have been… difficult.” He turns the turban in his hands, terrified of the answer to the question chewing through his lips.

“Mnh. Took a few miracles. Caught a bit of flack, disappearing out in the open, even more for pulling some of those poor… those women with me.” She wipes the rag over her face and drops it with a wet _thwop_. “We hid in a cellar for six days while the city burned, real _Slaughterhouse-Five_ stuff. The Romans, whatever they didn’t take, they came through with pikes and… so it goes. Had to miracle up some food and water.”

The wind howled once through the hills, and then silenced.

“Just thinking about. Change. Lack thereof. You know.”

She glances over her shoulder, where Aziraphale stands with his mouth open, lips pale.

“You don’t want to hear this.” Deadpan. She claps her hands on her thighs, rises with a stumble, something no unearthly creature should suffer without a discorporating blow. “Right. Back to it, then.”

-

They feed a few more, just enough to get the town through the end of the month. Stoves alight on so little wood, bread rises with so little grain, women fall to their knees and weep in gratitude. The kind of stuff a Westerner might throw in the trash. What was left to mold becomes clean. Children are granted more excuses to play, a little more time to be children. It’s increasingly suspect that DEATH did not send them here purely on business, but knowing them, as much as the Ethereal and Infernal worlds were weary, HE probably thought it would do them some good to… simply do.

There was nothing particularly Good or Bad. They simply ‘were.’ The thought probably occurred to Crowley before it did, Aziraphale.

_You’re so clever, how can you be so stupid?!_

‘Their side.’ They thought they’d decide what ‘their side’ meant. Infinity does not care for their intentions; language is rarely in the hands of the object.

Wineskins in hand, they appear on a ledge far back in the mountains where no lights or lamps or torches burn bright, and the Milky Way embraces them with a cold, indifferent glare. Infinity, itself.

Crowley says she doesn’t remember which stars she hung and Aziraphale doesn’t probe the lie. It was left to Gabriel and another angel, an archangel, one he’s suspected for so long as having been replaced. For all her glee in tempting, tricking, and pranking, Crowley is, and always has been, in love with humanity to an aching, even agonizing, degree. She would have only blown the trumpet, Aziraphale is sure, had the Armies finally clashed, hearkening war as though there were places left to hide and sidestepping the violence, herself, possibly pulling a few souls with her. Aziraphale doesn’t remember any of the Fallen from before they became what they are, but a few of Gabriel’s taunts now land especially hard that he thinks about them in earnest.

Crowley was meant to heal. Crowley was meant to love and to guide. She’s no more a demon than he is an angel, anymore, they simply Are. Or Were. Very little feels simple between them, at the moment.

“S’pose HE wanted to teach us a lesson on this one, eh?”

She passes the skin, smudging her mouth on her sleeve, her hijab lying in ruin around her shoulders. Aziraphale accepts the wine without hesitation, perhaps even a little greed, or need, more like it.

“I don’t think HE particularly cares to teach lessons. If anything, I feel a little freer than before.”

Crowley looks at him, really looks at him, disgust flaming in her eyes.

“Good work, still, you think? Lot of happy campers, down there, waiting on HIM?”

“No, of course not. But I think it’s enough that they hope--”

Crowley scoffs, “Really, and that’s what you thought in 1666? There’s nothing to rebuild, here, angel, there’s no one to…”

She makes to stand but he pulls her back down with the gentlest tap of her arm and she collapses like the arches of Palmyra, rather than shoving him off like she might’ve if his presence were more offensive than the topic he was broaching. He has to be careful. Regardless of how much he understands about human emotion, Crowley is unquestionably out of his league in its practical application. She doesn't look at him but she is. She always is.

“What I’m saying is…" He wets his lips. "That is, even when it’s coming, even when they’re so, so very sure the world has abandoned them, hope eases it.”

“Doesn’t.”

“It does.”

“Just drop it, angel.”

She rubs her eyes with the ringed hand. The jewels glint in the starlight as though they could climb back into the celestial crucible where their atoms fused. The teacup shattered, now come back together. If it’s impossible, there must be a universe where it isn’t. But unlike that proverbial teacup, and unlike their parallel selves, who are probably enjoying a very different kind of wedding night, if Aziraphale permits himself some self-deprecation, there, he knows they’re not going to meet on this one. Not in this moment. A wall is building in the silence second by second, brick by brick while Crowley silently fumes and fusses with her hijab, her hands. She scratches at the skin around the ring as though to rip it off.

“You don’t have to wear it,” he says, throat tight. She sniffs, pulls down her scarf to smooth back her hair.

"Bloody thing itches, can’t see how I got through the day.”

“I mean the ring.”

His gaze is solemn, sincere, once she works up the nerve to meet it. It takes several attempts. Her eyes dart wildly from the stars to his face to the mountains where more doomed villages nestle in the earth, ready to become one with it. She can't trust them. She can't trust her ears, senseless. He's rendered her senseless at a moment where they're all she has left. Never unkind to her, he persists by backtracking. Condemning himself. Lying.

“I only got it because I thought you’d like it. It doesn’t mean...”

_It doesn’t mean anything. Or, it could mean anything you want._

Crowley stands, steps away from him. Before Aziraphale registers what he’s done, he hears the damning staccato _clink, clink, clink_ of metal down the cliff.

“It doesn’t, then. We’re done. Let’s go.”

The sound in his ears is like tinnitus, encompassing, disorienting, and he's senseless, too, as Crowley tears at her clothes and momentarily dissolves, a chaos of shadow and gold before she returns to her male form. With a snap of his fingers, his regular set of skintight clothes and sunglasses appear. They avoid each other's eyes.

“Back to London, come on, angel,” he sneers, “maybe there’s more work for us, yet.”


	3. You May Be Wondering Why You're Alone

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Aziraphale reflects on poor decisions, while Crowley takes a more active approach.

**Tangier - Thousands of Years Ago, and a Few Hours after Things Became Complicated**

He allowed the morning light to scorch his eyes, unblinking. The sun rose beyond the coast, first red then gold, a foreboding sight over a harbor nevertheless as calm and still as a mirror. After a night spent drinking too much, thinking too hard, and permitting himself things no angel should conceive of, let alone pursue, he’d stood alone on his balcony for hours. Aziraphale watched the stars fade in the encroaching dawn.

Merchants setting up on the street below assumed him a statue to ward off Evil spirits. He returned their solemn glances with a brief smile, gone in a flash of sunlight, a trompe l’oeil to have them rubbing their eyes. Now 7am. He’d stood four hours without moving.

“What is that smell?”

“ _OH_ m-m-my goodness!” He whipped around and gripped the balustrade behind him.

“Aziraphale,” Gabriel announced. He sniffed, “Is that… Evil?”

“Erm,” he thought quickly, “why, yes. Yes it is. Just last night--" Aziraphale had to think on his feet. Although he'd somewhat gotten used to them over the past thousand years, he still struggled to know where he stood. "I have no idea how she caught wind of my lodging here--but a, a _demon_ appeared while I was, while I was out and positively _pillaged_ the place,”

Gabriel’s posture went rigid, his face a rictus of contempt.

“And you dispatched her?” he commanded more than inquired, Heaven's way in all things.

Aziraphale’s head thrummed with mead, his throat dry, “No, no-ho!" He squeaked, "Afraid I missed her, erm..." Gathering and cursing himself in kind, he steeled under Gabriel's scrutiny, lowering his voice at the archangel’s upturned brow. “Ohhh, but this particular demon, very wily. The wiliest, I daresay,”

Gabriel glanced at the divan with its pillows cast over the floor, the spilled jugs of mead and rumpled sheets. The broken table, the pillaged desk.

“She found you, _stole_ from you,” he enunciated, “and yet you were unable to track her?"

“Ah, well,”

He realized they had turned. He walked backwards through the chamber, Gabriel advancing on him with hands crossed sternly behind his back. An archangel’s interrogation provokes mortal fear. He felt the weight of deceit like a millstone around his neck.

“It was a terrific trick, truly, but Crowley--”

“Crawly?!” Gabriel thundered. Aziraphale nearly smited himself.

“Yes, well no, she goes by Crowley now." Gabriel sneered. He continued to panic, now shaking his head. "Ohhh, that wily old serpent, she, she lied in wait to _Fell_ me, I'm sure, but she must've slunk out. When she realized I was a Principality. Naturally.”

“Oh, naturally!” Gabriel’s arms swept wide, carelessly knocking into a sconce. He thrice-damned it, sucked on his swollen thumb, and growled at the wall, “And Principality that you are, you were unable to capture her. Think of the intel, Azirapahale! The serpent that started this mess!"

His fist collided with a beam, splintering it instantly. Evidently intending to harm did not harm him back. The air suffused with sandalwood, swirling together among Good and Evil, Holy Wrath (although angels will tell you they don’t feel wrath, that’s not to say _righteous indignation_ isn’t off the table). The miasma of Crowley's lingering perfume warred with Gabriel's power. It prickled Aziraphale’s skin. It burned his delicate palate.

“Gabriel, I’m told Crowley is the strongest demon they have to put forth aside from the Princes, themselves.” He had no idea if this was true, but Crowley impressed him enough. “I may only be a Principality but, ah… it would be an honor to, to be the one to bring her to her knees,” his eyes widened, "I’ve, after all, I’ve been on Earth the longest, I fit in seamlessly.” Patently untrue.

The archangel’s wrath receded. Gabriel breathed in and grimaced, disliking the feel of his lungs, the contortions of his abdomen.

“I suppose you will need more power at your disposal,” he thought aloud.

“Oh, I don’t think--”

“Yes,” he said, “we’ll consider upping your miracle allowance. See that you put it _to use_ , Aziraphale. If Crowley becomes a problem…”

“No, no, no,” Aziraphale said, “certainly, the more I can serve Heaven’s will,”

“The better.” Gabriel paused, frowning at the empty cups, again considering the general disarray of the chamber. “Good work on…" he faltered. Aziraphale twiddled his fingers. "I imagine she would have concealed herself from humans upon entering, too. You questioned them?"

“Yes!" He lied. "I kept that in mind the whole time,” he lied again.

Gabriel regarded him with a frosty glare, his nose pinched in disgust at the continued waft of Evil. Crowley's scent penetrated every surface, perfumed every hall, every drape of fabric, his clothes.

“Right. I’ll mention an extended allowance to Head Office for the future, but no promises. And, Aziraphale,”

“Yes, Gabriel?”

“Make sure to report _every time_ one of you finds the other. Your lagging here is troubling.”

“Oh,” he paled, although Gabriel didn’t notice, “absolutely, we must keep her--keep _track_ of her, of course, of course.”

Gabriel examined a spilt cup of mead, kicking it aside and smiling when it clanged along the stone floor.

“See that you do.”

**Decidedly NOT the Bookshop - Present Day**

Has he gotten this drunk since the Inquisition? Probably not. No, he’s sure of it. Not that he can remember much, but the waves in his vision almost feel like the transition between dimensions, the feeling before his wings unfurl. 

Several women and not a few men tried to sidle up next to him from the moment he arrived, most derailed by the blank glare of his black glasses. One or two believed him to be some sort of cosplayer, speaking unfamiliar names. A presumptuous man placed his hand on the small of his back and before he could speak, he poured his drink on his crotch and then miracled it full again. Not before ensuring that his cock was covered in blisters. A nice surprise for whoever was dumb enough to indulge him.

The night is long and the crowd only grows, throngs and throngs of blonds catching a whiff of his attention here and there. Swedes on vacation from university, blue eyes hazy with vodka. A man exactly one third of a percent of his age climbs onto a neighboring stool, shoulders huddled tight. He fails to catch the harried bartender’s attention.

Soft curls, hands, and a pout that could move mountains. Add a few pounds and he's a ringer. Crowley takes this bolt from the blue with all the grace he's mustered in his years of being unbelievably cool.

“Have at,” he gulps, pulling a gin and tonic from the Ether, around where he keeps his spare sunglasses and mid-range scotch. The man accepts it without comment. His blue eyes are red-rimmed, spirit tarnished with rage. If it were Aziraphale, you'd think he'd sold a book. Crowley pretends.

“Thanks,” he mutters, now nailed to the stool. Much in the same straits as Crowley, himself.

He leans into his hand, propping against the bar between the initials G&B and AJC (no relation, probably). Plush lips tremble and the poor thing sways with repressed tears. Crowley realizes he’s already drunk and permits him to collapse against his shoulder with a depressed huff of laughter.

“Broke up.”

Their glasses clink.

“Aye, me too.”

“Cheers.”

They drink in unison, their glasses clattering down like the wails of the grieving.

“I just--” he hiccups, rubbing furiously at his eyes, “thought he was the one, you know? Thought we were made for each other. That ba-hastard,”

Crowley sips, passing no comment. He doesn’t bother probing the man’s memories because his powers get a bit foggy after six hundred sips and he doesn’t want to displace anything he might need, like motor function or adverbs.

“That’s not fair.”

The man smiles ruefully, brow knotted so hard it casts a shadow over his face. He wipes his nose on his arm with a sniffle,

“He’s too bloody… too _kind,_ maybe. It’s not like we _broke up_ broke up, he just, he always gives me an _out._ Like he thinks I’ll leave.”

His laugh is derisive, self-inflicted.

“Know what you mean,” Crowley says, somehow heard over the raucous party behind them. The man nudges his elbow.

“Right? And I told him so many times, no, I’m here to stay but, ha! Guess I wasn’t. Guess he knew from the start it’s… it wasn’t going to work. Bloody unbelievable, like a schnauser, sniffing that out.”

Crowley indulges his declarations of love, his anger and self-pity. He orders two shots of whiskey and they down them, again, in unison. A moment of silence passes, then becomes awkward, and he realizes with some anxiety that it’s his turn to air grievances. Mortal expectations. Hundred years could pass between him and Aziraphale and he _still_ wouldn’t think to call.

“Same. He just couldn’t… too many boundaries, I s’pose. Not like I set any. Don’t have much to preach, there.” The man nods. “I thought, too, _I’ve never felt so complete_ , always been this,” his nails dig into his cheek, “this emptiness, this great, big fault line inside me, n’it turns out we don’t trust each other like we, like I thought we did.”

“Where’d he do it?” the man asks. His cheeks shine. His eyes shine.

“On a hike.”

“What are you, lesbians?”

The man slaps his hand on the bar with a hiccuping laugh. Glasses rattle. Crowley smiles grimly, smooths a lock of hair behind his ear.

“That’s so perfect, I _can’t even_. Him? On a bus, going to a _party_ ,” he spits, and now the bar shines, too. His hand falls to the wood, an inch or two from Crowley’s. Crowley feels almost clairvoyant. “Did you walk away?”

He pretends he’s not choking, wipes his lips on his sleeve and nods. Somehow, the words are still stuck in his throat, as if locking them there means it didn’t really happen, that he could walk into the bookshop with chocolates and flowers: no Yemen, no Tangier standing between them like the fucking, like the fucking…

The drunken mind struggles with metaphors. Similes? He tunes back into the man’s rant.

“--and that’s understandable. You can’t keep dancing around commitment, you know, if your priorities aren’t the same, why bother? HE, for instance, said _Fine, yeah, kids, why not?_ And then, four years later, we’re through with uni and suddenly he’s all, _But you’d have to stunt_ **_your_ ** _career,_ **_I_ ** _couldn’t do it_ , like, what the fuck is that?”

Crowley thinks about kids. He likes kids. He changes the subject.

“And what do you get up to, these days, without him?”

“Well, it only just happened,” their fingers touch. Their glasses clink. Sip. Sync. “I was thinking, I might just do something to spite him.” He stares off into the mirror behind the bar, but he doesn’t see himself, and while Crowley watches him closely, he doesn't see him either. The man turns back with a glint of blond hair, a coy smile. “Spite’s all I’ve got left at this point, innit?”

-

Aziraphale’s scent, that familiar, froo-froo, _I thought they stopped making that cologne in ‘63,_ **_1863_ ** scent, is still all over Crowley’s apartment from their deliberation over Agnes’ prophecy, so that’s right out. It’s also 400 miles away. Instead, he drags himself out of his seat and into this placeholder’s arms. They stagger up the dilapidated staircase as though ascending the Circles. The man navigates the alleyways of Edinburgh with almost sober certainty. The hostel appears before Crowley in a blink, and in another blink, he's inside.

It’s cramped and cold and entirely what he needs to get his mind off things.

“Don’t wake my roommate, I’d never hear the end of it.”

The man trips, giggles as Crowley fumbles, too, wriggling out of his jacket and vest. The air is heavy between them, a revenge lay, but they try to keep it light. He doesn’t know his name, not like he needs it, but Crowley hasn’t _fraternized_ with anyone since he thought he had a chance with Azira--

Don't do that. Don't do that and you won't have to remember doing it, later. This is about fun. Feelings aren’t _fun_.

The man slips off his shirt in one fluid movement and works on Crowley’s belt, pulling the zipper down with his teeth. Crowley covers his eyes with an arm and breathes like he needs to, the stink of cologne and asbestos curdling in his lungs. Suddenly, his legs are free, _Drainpipes at that, this boy’s a veteran,_ and then they’re off. Blond stubble tickles his thighs, soft hands slide up to where his cock stands like a fucking daisy after a good rain. Been awhile. He gasps when a thumb strokes the tip, and again when the man laves at the base, an adventurous hand swiping down. Heat builds. His toes curl, head keels back. He hugs his knees tight as his lips part around a shocked moan when fingers fly south.

“Do you have any…?”

“I’m fine, ready. I, beforehand. Clean, that is. Thoroughly.” It’s hard to get his thoughts in a row.

His fingers are quick, entering alongside his tongue, spreading the fire like Crowley’s fingers spread across his scalp, tears brimming as the pleasure climbs.

He pulls back and chuckles at his long, pitiful whine.

“Did he ever do this for you?”

Crowley shakes his head, then realizes he’ll have to speak, what with how hard he’s shoving the man’s head down.

“ _No,_ ” he gasps, “not once,”

The man huffs, “ _Typical_.”

Fingers rub down and curl up, striking deeper and more fluid, sweat soaking the sheets by now as he bites the trim flesh of his arm and wishes he had more to dig into than muscle. Always the sleek model, always the opposite to soft folds and comforting embraces, always angular, muscular, off-putting, not at all like...

No. Still not going there.

“ _Ssstop_ , I can't, I, you’ve got to--”

“It’s okay, we’ve got all night,”

Crowley spasms as he comes, thighs tight, the man’s tongue tongue swirling, three knuckles and fingers deep inside of him and churning, teasing, glistening.

His breath is moist when he climbs back up, kissing and biting, clamoring on the hard, twin bunk bed up to Crowley’s neck. Their sweat smears and mixes. He grinds down, shimmying between his legs and Crowley moans to the side, fisting the sheets. The man arranges him as he pleases, until his cock is pressed against him and he throws his head back.

“I’ll go slow,” he promises, lying.

There’s no need for it. Crowley doesn’t want it slow, or sweet, or anything that might call forth his wildest dreams. He tries not to remind himself why he wound up here. It’s too big to touch on, and it _hurts_. Tonight isn’t about feeling even more pain, until he says it is.

His voice trembles, “Don’t bother, s'fine,”

“You sure?” he asks, although he doesn't wait.

The breach is slow. A moan catches in the back of Crowley's throat and shreds into a hiss. Tears prick at his eyes and in revenge for his stupidity, his mind turns on him with every memory he could have made instead, piercing through to that emptiness, toward the vague and dishonest fury he pretends at being spurned. Aziraphale would probably not have gotten this far, yet, and for all that Crowley's a leadfoot, he would've capitulated to every soft denial. But this is not supposed to be slow, thoughtful. That’s not why he’s here.

He claws at the man’s shoulders and rises up to nip at his neck, briefly satisfied by the shocked gasp. He falls back, panting, lips thin and trembling.

“You said he was a bastard, well, out with it, then. Hurt me,” he demands.

The man's grin is worthy of a duke of Hell.

"If you insist." He leans in, gathers Crowley's wrists above his head and gives them a warning squeeze. "Now, love," he whispers, guiding Crowley's teeth to his shoulder, "say his name."

Crowley closes his eyes and imagines.

Aziraphale pulls back and slams forward.

He buries his scream, but the word resonates throughout his flesh, his traitorous flesh, molding around an invader. Not an invader. Crowley chose to be here because free will permits him to do so. This is not infidelity. They agreed on nothing. He is free to please and fill and hurt himself however he likes, and this doppelganger fulfills all but one desire. Blond hair. Rosy cheeks. No attachments to leave him ruined when they rip.

 _"Aziraphale,"_ he gasps as Aziraphale’s cock brushes his prostate.

 _"Aziraphale,"_ he groans when teeth release their hold on his neck.

 _"Aziraphale,"_ he whimpers when he comes and Aziraphale comes inside of him with a deep shudder, grunting into his ear and milking his cock.

This is not infidelity. This is Crowley managing. This is his life, made of his desires, his mistakes, and his alone.


	4. Time Equals Distance, Divided by Speed

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Crowley considers the space between them, while Aziraphale is suspended in time.

**What Would Become the Bookshop - Some Time Ago. The 1820s? We’ll Settle for That.**

Several hours had passed during the length of their debate, and Aziraphale didn't know where they’d gone. All that he knew was that Crowley made such things irrelevant. Time moved in a circle around him, in utter disregard of God’s typical design even for its superdimensional inhabitants, and he thought, perhaps, that it was due to the gravity of their argument.

He shook his head fiercely, sputtering, “It simply can’t happen!”

This invited spirited opposition. Crowley scooted forward, whipping off his glasses to prove the sincerity of his point. He had a vague sense that this strategy was effective, since Aziraphale tended to look away when he did so, and when Aziraphale looked away, it meant he was listening very closely, indeed.

“Look,” he said, slicing his hand through the air, “if mitochondria can, can _wriggle_ their way from Eve to one daughter and another and another--”

“You _cannot_ do it, it, it’s not in the _Plan_ ,”

“And how do you know? Has the, has the _Lord Almighty_ ever spared you a glance? Ever see the Mongolians coming, the Avars you were so sore about, destroying that inn in, in bleeding... Wallachia? Whatever it was, then.”

They were far into the night and the London Fog crept outside as dark and monstrous as a hellhound, but the interior of the shop was insulated from all trouble between Heaven and Hell. Crowley lounged on the floor in a nest of pillows. Aziraphale reclined in his rococo silk chair. A space empty but for themselves, a few candles and, of course, the thousands upon thousands of books in his collection. Perhaps one of them offered insight on this particular argument.

“I am telling you,” Aziraphale enunciated, “you _cannot_ put the brain of a human into the cranium of a horse and expect it to produce a species to win all sorts of, of, no! You cannot do it at all. And don’t try!”

Crowley tilted the bottle only to find it empty. He fell back into what he thought was a seductive lounge, but was really more of a drunken sprawl. One would have thought he’d perfected this. Certain elements of his surroundings were distracting, made him too aware of himself. Decades before, he’d made the brief mistake of thinking he had orchestrated a temptation, when Aziraphale had, of course, been tempting him all along. Maybe his capture was a pretext for crêpes. He had watched Aziraphale avoid watching him, not unlike how he avoided him, now.

Things had vastly improved since that night in Montmartre, after that daring rescue from the Bastille. For instance, they were now only three feet apart, crammed together by towers of manuscripts, and if Crowley leaned forward only a little more, his head would be in the angel’s lap. The imagery stalled his thinking painfully. Resistance-- _Vive la souffrance!_ \--to the waves of alcohol and poor decisions was slowly but raucously slipping from him.

In a show of will, he collapsed back into his nest, almost swimming.

(That’s drowning, though: almost swimming.)

“ _Look_ ,” he said, empty glass flying from his grip and floating to Aziraphale’s desk, “all I’m-- _hic_ \--all I’m trying to _get at_ , is that you wouldn’t put up some playground, a kindergarten for all Creation to romp around in, bully each other, write sopping, preachy romances--” he flicked at a signed, first-edition copy of _Pamela: or, Virtue Rewarded_ , “n’expect them not to, not to play, not to breed? All these bored, horny little creatures?”

Perhaps he was projecting, here.

Aziraphale shook his head, “Hor--bree--No, _no_ , stop it! Your Head Office wouldn’t even, they wouldn’t!” He took his glass in both hands and gulped a vintage worth as much as its weight in silver.

“Oh, please.” Crowley waved him off, throwing too much shoulder into it. “That poor horse would be terrified out of its mind, literally, if it had to stare at, at bloody, _tax accounts_ …”

Crowley had never done taxes, although he enjoyed muddling minor details in other people’s accounts. He’d learned this after Hell gave up trying to keep its own books, which worked for the exact sum of two minutes and forty-two seconds, being that very few demons can actually read. 

This not only gave him more leeway with miracles, but also deadlines, leeway an angel could only dream about in Heaven’s rigid top-down structure. This was down-top, baby. Crowley had more control of his course of action than his choice of drink for the evening, as long as he produced results management could qualify. For one with such an imagination (and scorn of paperwork) as he, leeway was the best vehicle to get him to do anything at all.

For the sake of their Arrangement, it meant also that Aziraphale had far fewer rules to adhere to in serving Hell. Just don’t put it that way, to him. This did not mean he had a similar disdain for rules, no. Aziraphale did not hate anything, yet (Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein were still but twinkles in the Lord’s capricious glare). His quiet disobedience gave him the appearance of indifference, whereas Crowley’s disdain was open and genuine. Aziraphale had his own deceitful system, labyrinthine, ungovernable, confoundingly beyond Heaven’s plan and punishment. That much was proven at the Eastern Gate.

It just so happened that this system expressly excluded extraneous, ex parte genetic experimentation on hapless horses. Exeunt: Crowley’s last fragment of defense. Aziraphale was his own man, and Crowley was, for all his bickering, a mere set of trembling knees.

Thank Satan for the ground that stopped his Fall.

A hand fell over his, speaking of falling, and his own hand was the only thing between Aziraphale’s and his thigh, and thus, by the transitive property of algebra, they had achieved second base. Crowley’s calculation was immediate and unrelenting. Horny creatures, indeed.

“Don’t,” Aziraphale pleaded. Their hands were touching and their eyes met, and if Crowley opened his mouth, he’d say something he couldn’t take back. Azirapahle crossed every boundary ever set before him, even his own, but that wasn’t Crowley’s jurisdiction. Blue eyes entrapped him, unwavering. Imprisonment without trial. Presumed guilty. “My dear, you can, you can have anything else, anything you want.” _Lies._ “Just leave that poor, poor horse alone.”

Crowley remembered he had a tongue, but not for linguistic purposes. He nearly gulped it down.

“Fine,” he muttered, collecting himself as that hand floated off his lap with a condescending pat.

Aziraphale's lips remained pink and wet and pouting as though in wait of an apology, barely concealing a self-congratulatory smile. He sipped his wine. He looked away. Crowley, gathering himself, pointed up at Heaven, itself, by no means prepared to surrender.

"But the chimps are still on the table. Building tools now, they are, n’what’s, what’s the Almighty got to say ‘bout that, hmm?”

**London - 1666, a Year of Terrible Consequence to Wooden Structures**

They were well into it, now, embittered by the effort it took to prolong their dispute. Time had schlepped each minute down this London street with the reluctance of a child caught truant during a dreaded exam. Aziraphale, neck stooping to hide his rage, felt every drop of rain on his head like a small slap from above, and Crowley tripped over every upturned cobblestone because he simply wouldn’t look where he was going.

Thus was the pace and route of their argument.

“And what, _pray_ tell, do I have to be sorry for? I’m a demon. _Sorry,”_ he choked as he stubbed his toe, “isn’t on the menu.”

The substitute of intense anxiety over Aziraphale's response came with an added fee. Crowley jittered. He held his tongue in his teeth.

Precious angel, unbelievably, was chasing him, for once. Chaussiraphale. Incrowleyable. The streets were nearly empty but Crowley wished there were some crowd he could disappear into, for all it meant to him that they were having it out (which meant they were talking) about something trivial in the grand scheme of things (though not to either of them) which invited some rather scary paths to Bigger Issues. That, and being out in the open is generally unnerving to serpents. Crowley found himself very nearly running away, of course, only as fast as Aziraphale would pursue him.

“For one, you might at least _slow down_ , it’s been raining all day and I can’t, oh, my _shoes,_ Crowley!”

Charred rubble still smoking from the Great Fire leered around every corner, a veritable Hellscape as far as the humans were concerned. Streets inundated with ash were very quickly becoming wet cement in the rain, a rain which came days after the first spark, a little on the nose for the Lord’s typical brand of irony. This was a factor of their argument.

“If you really wanted, you could walk atop the ash, for one.”

He may have been 99% evil, by his standards, with a 1% chance of not caring about anything at all, but Crowley did care for some rather undemonic things. Like not slogging his suede shoes through the mud, like wine, and good company. Children.

Aziraphale had respectfully dodged that topic, so far. His wisdom there was antediluvian.

He snapped his fingers. Aziraphale became lighter than the ash, hovering above it like water above oil. His shoes, however, were still a mess.

“Oh, thank you,” he breathed, “but it still stands, _Crowley!”_

“Unlike the Dove’s Wing,” he clipped, Aziraphale’s favorite pub for mead, “or any of those other fancy little places Heaven ignored.”

“Stop it, this instant!”

“Bit rash to burn a whole city. No more plague outbreaks with roasted rats, can’t think of anything on this scale since--”

_“Crowley!"_

Aziraphale stomped his foot on the mud, causing a terrible splash that nevertheless rolled off his coat like water off leaves. Crowley glanced over his shoulder, ready to stoke the debate only to find the angel unmoving, red-faced, blond curls flattened by the rain. His fists were white and ready to fight.

Crowley halted like he’d run into a bar, his whole core spasming. He wondered what the connection of their skin would feel like at 20mph of rage. Is that first base? Second?

“What, angel?” he tried for irritation, for boredom, anything other than the anticipation he felt at the chance of an honest-to-badness brawl in the middle of a burnt-out street. The shadows their wings would cast with their feathers colliding. Aziraphale had never been this angry in front of him; he doubted the angel had ever been this angry, at all.

"Whole neighborhoods died, and your flippancy, think of the chil-”

“Aye, and children died then, too, bit of a theme in your Great Plan.”

His sneer twitched.

Aziraphale reacted as if he’d slapped him. His head whipped to the side, hopelessly scanning the blackened buildings as though the lives buried beneath them could still be salvaged, and Crowley watched as his shoulders fell like so many homes in the past few days, like so many angels before him. He watched the fight in him die like the fire when all there was to burn had collapsed in plumes of smoke.

His lip quivered. His chin dipped to his chest.

“There’s just no call for it,” he mumbled.

“Angel,” Crowley said, uneasy and transfixed.

The careful numbness in his spirit succumbed to the tingle of cold, of the rain on his face like spikes as though he’d been crushed and given reprieve only to discover the pain of blood rushing back in to nourish the deprived flesh. Suddenly, he was _starving_ , too aware of his emptiness.

Crowley didn’t love _things,_ but he appreciated having some in his life. If only to break up the monotony of Time’s favorite project, Eternity, in all her irreverence of the mortal struggle, the kind of irreverence of life Aziraphale now accused him of. Nothing but the opposite could have been true, despite his demonic allegiance and all dastardly things implied therein. Crowley cared deeply, but he’d cared so deeply about so many things.

Aziraphale cared almost in spite of his own acknowledgement that having meant losing, at least to mortals. Almost. Crowley knew a fair bit of ignorance was lodged in there, but Aziraphale's love affair with humanity was part of what enamored him. Loving to love. That's God's Plan to the tee, don't they say? Or it should be, not that anyone was asking Crowley. Aziraphale was perfect in his unspoken disobedience, and yet he was still drowning for voicing his. Something essentially Wrong in him, perhaps. Wrong enough for him to distract an angel from helping survivors, were there any. A reasonable excuse. He relented.

“There’s nothing we can do, at this point, angel.”

“I just thought you might understand, of all people. Even Gabriel…”

“Gabriel is... “ he thought, then thought better, “he’s not on the front line. He’s not like you.”

“I’m on his side.”

Crowely bristled in immediate disagreement, “Gabriel’s, he’s not, that is,” he struggled to say without speaking the truth, “he doesn’t know what it’s like for them.” He dared a little further. “For us.”

Aziraphale, thanks be, didn’t challenge that, but then again, no angel could understand the feeling. No other angel, that is. The passage of human lives through the meat grinder of existence matters very little to them. Love, from an angel’s point of view, means appreciating the process as much as the individual, thus concerning oneself very little with individual pain, at all. Martyrdom begets Paradise. Who are the blessed to complain on the rack?

Speaking of the pain of a good stretch, Crowley kept at least three yards between them. His teeth were close to cracking. Aziraphale wasn’t looking at him and he still felt the weight of his gaze like the press of stones on his chest.

He reversed course. Plead guilty, and save thy soul. Before he could advise himself against it, he rested a hand on Aziraphale's shoulder, recoiling when the angel flinched. Inscrutable eyes found his hand and it burned, suspended between them. He fell in on himself.

“There’s no turning back. Natural progress, the Plan. You’ve told me.”

“But what if…” Aziraphale ground out, and promptly shut his mouth.

Crowley chewed his cheek, mouth contorting, weighing the consequences of pushing the question. Doubt, distrust, disillusionment--all very demonic. For an angel, there’s no solace, no antidote once it’s there. There’s not even the chance of confession, let alone forgiveness. That’s humanity’s out. There’s only one answer to a questioning angel. No escape, despite Aziraphale’s artful dodge of punishment, so far, and Crowley knew from the tips of his black wings to the storm in his hippocampus what that answer was.

“Come on, then,” he breathed, reaching for Aziraphale’s arm, his chest tingling at the lack of resistance, “let’s get away from the rain, at least.”

-

The cellar survived the fire, but its inhabitants did not. The stone walls acted rather like a brick oven: the stench of rotting, half-baked meat indescribable. Crowley ground his jaws at the darkness, the half-assed destruction. He’d long known that any cri de coeur would fall deaf on divinity’s ears.

He waved the bodies into a mass pit before the next shovel of lime. Aziraphale allowed him to guide him down, black-taloned hand hovering adventurously over his waist. Crowley cleared his throat and followed his descent, holding his breath at the imagery of the angel’s back, unguarded even in the midst of a spat with a demon. The only demon, in fact, that he’d ever encountered after the Fall.

Crowley knew he wasn’t an exemplary representation of Hell. He wondered what Aziraphale thought it was like, despite all the complaints exchanged between them about their respective Head Offices.

“There." He waved a bench into existence. "Have a seat, sort yourself.”

Aziraphale deflated, the hem of his cape lifting in a brief flourish before the weight of the stone grave pulled it down. The stench remained in the cramped room, quickly suffusing with the riotous combination of Good and Evil, already a complex odor Crowley knew well and craved in its absence.

“It’s Ineffable,” Aziraphale declared, although the words were bulky and for all they’d made a home there, foreign in his mouth.

“Makes no difference, really,” Crowley said, anticipating the oncoming glare. Angelic fury truly is a spectacle.

“If you make one more joke about--”

“I’m not joking, angel. Wasn’t. I know how you feel.”

He sat on a barrel that once contained beer. Its contents had boiled for so long, it would hardly be palatable, not that Crowley would discriminate, at the moment.

“You don’t know how I feel,” the angel spat, “you just said you don’t feel at all, demons don’t.”

“I never said that,”

“You did, that’s why I--”

“I never said _I_ didn’t feel… some things, at least. You’ve seen much evidence to the, to the contrary,”

He shifted atop the barrel, practically vibrating, terrified of where he would have to go (and, primarily, what he would have to avoid) to snap him out of this. Aziraphale's hand fell into the empty space next to him. He glanced up and then away. Crowley hesitantly accepted, rising up, crossing a boundary, and sitting on the same side. White fingers caught the black hem of his coat and played with the velvet, stroking against the grain and down again. Crowley removed his glasses, making no difference to his perception in this darkness. It was a safer bet than the words he shoved down his throat.

Aziraphale tightened his grip. His head toppled back to the stone with a small _thwack_ that made Crowley wince before lolling to the side and settling on his shoulder. This also elicited a wince.

“Ineffable doesn’t mean ‘fair,’” _as you well know_ , “and if anything you’ve said is true, then it doesn’t mean ‘unfair,’ either. It just is.”

“I’m so tired, Crowley,” Aziraphale whispered, “I wish I could sleep like you do.”

Seconds tripped by awkwardly, time warped into minutes.

“You can,” Crowley’s throat was dry, “I mean, I wouldn’t move, if you did.”

For a moment, he prayed. It comes naturally to an angel, to whom thinking, itself, is a kind of prayer, given that what angels think is usually God-related and always positive, thereto. Crowley prayed that the darkness meant something different: for it to be his hand and not the coat Aziraphale gripped so tightly, head on his shoulder to simply rest because it was preferable, because the weight of the world had not crushed them into this cellar, and Aziraphale was with him because he wanted to be.

The Lord had not granted Crowley's prayers in a very long time, he thought, if She ever had.

He felt everything around him, the vice of darkness, cramped thoughts, and impossible possibilities. Milan, Tangier, England, Rome. Centuries flickered before his eyes and Aziraphale’s breath was his undoing even through the velvet of his suit. Try not to think of the warmth of his arm, touching all the way down to their wrists.

In so many ways, Aziraphale pretended to depend on him, whether by rescue from some petty threat on his corporation or the irritant of anything from a long line to a lack of good wine. It all brought them closer. Did that mean something? _Anything?_ Greed is demonic, nevermind, lust. Constant greed, anything to fill it, but that graceless chasm in him had taken shape, over the years. Fixated its hunger.

Here was Crowley. Damned. Prepared to starve for the rest of his life.

“Best not,” Aziraphale sighed, shattering his thoughts like a glass at a high note, "surely there’s work to be done.”

Crowley’s voice was small,

“The humans have it sorted, they know how to rebuild.”

He kept perfectly still. Think furniture. Something designed to be used.

“Well,” Aziraphale said, “a few hours couldn’t hurt.” Crowley thanked Satan for time’s strange course, today, slavering over it. “I wonder if I’ll dream, you know I’ve never dreamt, before?” Monotone, his voice was nevertheless conversational, the kind at a funeral when words make space between loss. “Do you dream?”

“Aye,” he answered reflexively, hackles up.

“What do you dream about?”

He didn’t have to think, his dreams washed over him in an instant, few as intimate as this and yet all similar. Safe in the shade, heavy. Warm and not alone.

“S’pose… what happens during the day. The past. Sometimes I dream about being human.”

“What’s that like?”

He gulped, his fingers twitched, “Well, being mortal and all, wondering what eternity means to them. What Heaven or Hell means.”

Aziraphale huffed. Crowley realized it was laughter muffled by his cloak

“And what does a demon dream of a mortal’s Heaven?”

He closed his eyes and counted the angel’s breaths, steadying himself. Aziraphale leaned a little heavier into him, a little less guarded,

“To me, at least, s’not much different from my mortal Hell.”

“Is that so?” he yawned, “I thought demons didn’t enjoy Hell, either…” Crowley had no answer to that. “You enjoy things, though.”

“I do,” he offered, “but… too much of them can be… too much.”

It was insufficient to sate Aziraphale’s curiosity, if his hum were any indication. The questions stopped, regardless.

“I hope I dream of that lunch we had on the Halys, after the war, when you found that Phrygian mead and thought to share it with me.”

“Mmh.”

“… Crowley?"

"Yes, angel?"

"I'm sorry about what I said. You're a nice person, you really--"

Crowley tsked, "Off with that."

He kept his eyes closed, although it made little difference to the darkness enfolding them. He was helpless, a terrifying feeling for a demon, to imagine himself through Aziraphale’s eyes, that he might be in someone’s good dream, nevermind at the center of it. He controlled his breaths, imagined he was made of the same stone as the wall supporting them. His flesh betrayed him. He remained warm, and soft, and Aziraphale leaned in a little more.

“I hope you remember when we dipped in the river at the heat of the day, so pleasant.” Crowley’s heart thrummed at the smile in his voice. “You splashed me like the devil you are. You do remember, don’t you?”

“Aye," he croaked.

“Thank you, Crowley."

He hesitated, but his mind and flesh were mutinous, and his mouth was no exception.

“Any time, angel.”

“Thank you.”

“I heard ya.”

-

A few hours later, Aziraphale awoke for the first time in his very long life, and despite the strange cellar, and the darkness, and the weight of the charred city above them, for a moment he remembered nothing. Not the walk, not the argument. Time was irrelevant. Finally reverent.

The world was dark, amorphous. He found himself in the feel of Crowley's chest beneath his cheek. They were alone, indistinguishable from each other in the dark, which heartbeat set the slow pace of sleep and contentment. He was warm. He was safe. His fingers curled in Crowley's vest as though nothing but sweet nothings had ever passed between them. He was not drunk, and hadn't been. Holding Crowley was an anchor when lost at sea, but it didn’t take long for him to find his bearings.

With a punch of fear, he teleported, trying very hard not to disturb him, or think much more about it at all.


	5. The Second Law of Thermodynamics

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> If the Lord had installed a reset button, Crowley and Aziraphale would have used it at every chance in their relationship. Every first move. Every joke that failed to land. She'd thought of it, to be sure, but watching them fumble with the consequences of their actions was Her main entertainment for the past 6000 years.

_“When two initially isolated systems in separate but nearby regions of space, each in thermodynamic equilibrium with itself but not necessarily with each other, are then allowed to interact, they will eventually reach a mutual thermodynamic equilibrium… Equality occurs just when the two original systems have all their respective intensive variables (temperature, pressure) equal; then the final system also has the same values.”_

**The Bookshop - Present Day, Mostly Empty, and Undeniably Sad**

Although not uncommon for the shop to be closed well into the tentative (and thoroughly discouraging) hours listed by the door, Aziraphale is not occupied by anything else. He hasn’t started one book or finished another. He’s not out at the park, or a restaurant, and doesn’t plan on leaving anytime soon. He has no company except for the ring in his pocket.

What to do with it? A strange weight, no longer shielded by the little box that’s acted as his worry stone for almost five thousand years, not now that the gift is unwrapped and returned, lighter. Smaller. Seemingly shrinking with each moment. He panics every few minutes because his pocket feels empty, and when he looks for it, he has to search. He let it out only once, revealed it at the precise moment he thought it would leave his hands for good, and now that he has it back, he’s more covetous of it than ever, yet it has no purpose. No meaning. Crowley said ‘no.’

He’s never been rejected. It hits him just as he’s walking to the kitchen for a cup of tea, like slamming your shin on a coffee table that your husband rearranged. He didn’t ask for it to be moved (he did ask for a husband).

His face slackens. His hands twitch.

Crowley has never told him ‘no.’

What is this indignation he feels, why does it precipitate a flood of shame? Tangier, and now Yemen. Crowley has every right to be angry with him and the rarity of it can only be proof. If Crowley is angry, the ball’s out of his court, isn’t it? Joined. When you bring someone on the boat, it loses a little buoyancy, and maybe that’s why the Ark had a members-only list, as it occurred to him back then, when he still had the good sense to avoid telling Crowley. He had the Plan to fall back on. Now, he’s just falling.

He closes his eyes to center himself but the opposite is true, or at least his center is no longer where he thought it was. Never told him ‘no’ in sixty centuries, how’s that for being spoiled? Only days before, they said it, _To the world_ , and both knew what it meant, at least he thought they did. He thought a lot of things, and poorly.

How could he go and cock it up so soon?

Why is it now, of all chances, that he's overplayed his hand?

He hides his chin in his collar. Jaw grinding, back stiff because if he lets himself uncoil, it'll all come tumbling out and he'll have no sympathetic ear to hear his troubles, no lighthearted banter to distract him. No empty bottles or full glasses or sunglasses. Just the sting of hope, and the little box he’d kept it in. History makes fools of us.

How do you lose that which you never owned? Technically, and only if he wants to hurt himself, (a manifest theme) it is appropriate to consider a gift as a loan. No, like buying on margin. Break it down: it’s not for you, not immediately, rather. You’ve put your purchase against an ideal future like money down and, month after year after decade and back into minutes, like the God of Hospitality, Herself, this bet of your heart invites constant, ineffable flux. The gift is not a gift. It’s speculation, a guess, the mere hope that it will be received after the time he’s hoarded it, greedily watching the market, starving his wish even when the odds seemed high.

Now that Crowley has denied him, the gift is nothing. Not even a worry stone, when it's the source of his worries. Not worries, not dread, either. Dread is for the future. The stock plummeted, the market has closed, and Aziraphale has gone from a man-sort-of-thing with a future as bright as Alpha Centauri, to a ghost-sort-of-thing with no future at all, at least nothing he can picture, or wants to. A gift is an arrogant bet, and now he’s broke. What do you hope when hope loses meaning? This must be what death feels like, or dying, anyway. The pain of each thought plows through him like a migraine, like a chest pain, like a hand grenade. Sharp pain absent of healing, not cauterizing like the touch of their hands after thousands of years of doubt.

Crowley said ‘no,’ and that’s all there is to it. That’s it. Over and out.

Aziraphale stares somewhere between the sink and the neighbor’s patio, and the birdsong in the garden joins the cacophony of the chokes and shrieks of automobiles on the street below, deafening but hardly distracting. Irreverent. Such moments should be silent. The world ought to stop when we realize our desolation, when loneliness sets in, but Nature abhors a vacuum, and sound is the only thing to fill the empty shop.

How he took for granted Crolwey simply listening to him! Offering comfort, however sarcastic. To think after sixty centuries, he'd exposed everything he'd held onto, _literally_ held, in a quarter of an hour, or however long it took for Crowley to catch him on that chase through the shop, the now-empty shop. Empty. He’s alone. The thought should be freeing, in a way, now that he has his final answer and their configuration is clear. Free to be. Of course it isn’t. Not free like he felt, the morning after they’d conquered Heaven and Hell, nor the long night on the bus back to London. Meanings, explanations, all silent amid this symphony of chaos and sudden defeat. All gone.

Very much under his breath, in case anyone is still listening, immortal or not, he whispers,

_"Fuck.”_

**A Mile from the Coast of a Country Soon to Be Known as Egypt - 3402 BCE**

Hot, hot, _hot_. Hot as a sauna. No one back in Britain had bothered to mention the utter _humidity_ of the Nile Delta. Not like humans got around much without a shield and direct orders or, more likely, unfortunately indirect orders. Head Office trouble all around, what with this or that kingdom in an uproar. A nice cruise was in order. Calm waters, gentle currents. An early precursor to mai-tais, if he had the inclination.

One could pretend these waves never once swelled and consumed certain doomed persons who turned down free tickets before God’s Big Show. Finale: a rainbow. Odd gift. It’s unusual to frown at a rainbow when children cheer for them, but humans often smile when they don’t understand.

Not much of a vacation if you can’t shake off thoughts like that! He tried, anyway. _Try harder._

They were getting up to big things, out west--kingdoms rising, city states conquering. Another war to shake off peace, stones thrown at the first sight of the olive branch. A big city was what he needed! Gather enough humans, and you’ve got a peaceful bureaucracy for at least a couple of decades, and Gabriel’s approval, for whatever that’s worth. Direct a few souls as commanded, get that out of the way. Nothing like a pat on the back from Head Office to at least imply his own grand direction in the unseeable scheme of things.

He pulled a curl, shuffled his shoulders at a kink in his wing. The advent of muscles and their tendency to tweak was an unwelcome inclusion with his corporation: assigned and already defective, he’d had a chat about it with a certain someone, all while keeping a respectful distance, of course. Blessed space. Eden and all of its sleepy pleasures were a long way off.

He chided himself. He didn’t want to think of work at the moment, or anyone that got in the way. He didn’t need anything, desire anything that he couldn’t acquire through a miracle, which really meant he needed nothing at all. So stop thinking about it. _Stop it._

Deep breath. The air was light, sweet-smelling as they sailed near the coast, guided by stars, and the sweet grasses of delta marsh wafted along the easterlies. He thought of mead, of wine and beer. His lips were chapped from the salt-heavy winds and he wished he’d brought a wineskin.

As if the universe had bent to his will, miracle or not, one appeared in his hand, and a foot right next to it.

“And what do you think you’re doing, stowed away on an innocent merchant’s ship?”

A silence far too comfortable.

“I thought I’d give Phoenecia a look,” he said, playing with the hem of his robe, “a bit of a break sounded nice.”

His companion turned his head, staring down at a familiar face as he stared down at his hands, more familiar, perhaps, than their own superiors’. His reply was quiet, content,

“I thought the same.”

“Mind if I…?”

“No, no, go right on ahead.”

The two of them scrunched together on their bellies at the bow, the wood hard under their robes but strangely comfortable. They took in the sea and the bright arm of the Milky Way that glimmered indifferently above, the waters painted with it so that one might not tell where the Heavens ended and the depths began. A tableau broken only by the slightest waves. He realized the two of them must have miracled the currents together, the twin force nearly halting the sea entirely. The boat stood in solitude from Time’s urgent flow.

“I think it’s… rather funny, you know,”

“What?” he asked, spinning a thread off his hem, flicking it off. Watched it fly free.

“It’s just… how long has it been since anyone could really _relax?_ With War, I mean. Ever since Cain--”

“Yes,” he murmured, “I’ve seen enough tales in the making.”

His mind begged reprieve.

“Can’t imagine what they’ll think up next. Heroic epics. One man takes on two, then it’s four, ten, twenty, a hundred. In a generation or three, he’s practically deified.”

Easy laughter from too close.

“Rather a lot of time to fill, tending the fire, watching the trees, working the soil. They have to pass it, somehow.”

Their eyes met and he couldn’t help his smile, and the returning smile was too bright for the dark night, shining like the stars reflected in his wine. He took a deep draught. Any subject other than war was palatable.

“You know they’ve got a new instrument, now?”

“What?”

“They, they carve out a gourd, and they wind it to a stick,” he emphasised with his hands, an easy symphony to his movements, “they stretch _intestines_ over the hole, up to the top of the stick. Absolutely fascinating, it sounds like, like nothing else.” His smile grew, almost entirely painless: far from grim thoughts and Pyrrhic victories, as that tale would come to forewarn. “They play it to those epics. Makes it so much more...”

“Here.” An elbow touched his, a hand skimmed over the wineskin in gentle request, fingers brushing. He surrendered it immediately. “Ah, would you look at that?”

He glanced up.

“A meteor?”

“You know they call them shooting stars? They think a god’s fallen, fallen in love with a human, or something like that. Again with the stories.”

“Stars falling in love!” A laugh burbled up around the warmth of the wine. “Guess they don’t understand the gravity of the situation.”

That same elbow nudged his rib, eliciting a small grunt, an emboldened laugh.

His cheeks burned.

They would remain until the boat docked, three days later, drinking in the hull, rising again to plot out the celestial mysteries of the stars. A winding argument about black holes. Perhaps one of the Almighty’s more questionable favorites in the grand scheme of things, stars genuinely falling into nothing but gravity, that solitary hunger, space that demands closeness, but let’s not wax poetic! This was an argument. They took respectfully opposing sides, although the wine kept tripping them up and at some unseemly moments, they found themselves in agreement.

The debate went on for days about the origin, the meaning, without treading too far into the Lord’s seeming friendship with DEATH and Destruction, but everything was questionable when they were close enough to whisper, to escape their superiors’ bureaucratic punishments.

The stars moved.

Well, the Earth moved, but that’s less romantic.

“I’d like to visit Alpha Centauri,” he said quietly, “it’s been a long time since I’ve seen a binary system up close. But leaving Earth for that emptiness… a bit boring, alone. Nothing like sharing that splendor.”

He grimaced. His cheeks reddened.

“Well,” came the hesitant answer, “if it ever comes down to it, I’ve been thinking of vacationing there,” he lied.

“Really?”

“Yes. You bring the wine, I'll make the arrangements."

The two of them giggled like the swirl of the wake behind them, shoulders bumping companionably, forgetting themselves and living--as immortals are not quite designed to do--purely in the moment. Appreciating the cold fact of its brevity before they returned to their respective sides.

“A vacation,” he repeated. “I’d rather like that.”

“Whenever you’re ready, let me know. A break from Head Office would be, after all of the…” he gestured at the shore, where a civilization would decline, any civilization, in a burst of War and the creep of Famine.

Human constructs are as mortal as their makers. Enjoying Peace, however quickly her olive branch decays once dropped, is something even angels and demons can grow to savor. Or, more truthfully, one angel, and one demon. And one particularly miraculous wineskin which did not deplete an ounce in three days and three nights, but you don’t see any sort of candelabra celebrating that.

Even immortals have their private pleasures, their momentary truces with hereditary enemies where monotonous duties peel away to reveal something softer, quieter, even genial before hardening again. Armistice in each other's arms, or a near thing. Even Crawly and Aziraphale could admit that, just now, as they had those years ago, and then gone without. Loneliness must be learned, as anything that is Nothing must have Something hurtling toward it. A filling of space; call it a flood, if you will.

See? The connotations rush in and unpleasant as they are, he’s not at the helm of that Ark of insecurities, same as he can’t control the warmth that spreads when their arms touch, when his fingers twitch and he learns that his current is racing at pace. He thought he was cold-blooded, and yet his cheeks are warm. Some feelings are too genuine to ignore. 

Time is measured by the approach of maximum entropy, the passage of heat into cold space, or, in this case, by that gently accelerating movement since the final day in Eden. Poor thing, that's the second law of thermodynamics, God wrote that one right into the fabric! He can’t escape it, nature of the beast, and that’s precisely why, once he realizes it, he doesn’t want to. That’s human nature, his Nature, that is.

An emptiness is merely an excuse to let Something in.

**Edinburgh - The Day after What One Might Call a Mistake**

Crowley wakes, like most humans do after a one-night stand, with a pounding headache and an overwhelming sense of regret. He’s far from home and nowhere at once. The man is gone but his roommate glares at him as he gathers his shirt from the floor, his jeans from the bedpost, his dignity from wherever he left it.

As far as orgasms go, it was technically the best he’s had in nearly two hundred years. Maybe four hundred, if he’s being generous. Last night would’ve been something to remember, the intensity of it, but of course nothing about this particular lay feels good in any non-physical meaning of the word. It didn’t clear his mind, but his corporation is practically singing, ready for another romp, steering him east on this street, south on this one, south on this one, south on this--

He rounds a corner. The Bentley appears, parked illegally on a sidewalk in the midst of a market. He slides in with very little feeling left, and turns on the sound system. The car begins softly crooning _Friends Will Be Friends._

Lying comes naturally to a demon. The Sabine women. Why drop that like so many bombs on the Rub al-Khali? He lied. About how he’d felt. About the extent of his participation. It always does good to sample the quality of the product, not that he’d had anything to do with fomenting it. Nothing like that felt like what he did, last night, but nothing felt like the fucking humanity of his situation more than those days. The isolating numbness of feeling, of body. Feeling someone else’s will crowd you in, careless of the implications or the damage done, and while Aziraphale did him no harm, he’s in agony, continues to to hurt like women do when they’ve survived torture only to find the city burning, climbing out of the brief respite of a cellar. Infused with terror. Everlasting terror.

And yet, they persist.

He scratches at the bruises on his neck, the red marks on his wrists, decides to keep them. Spite. For whom, he doesn’t know. Crowley doesn’t know a lot of things. Perhaps a reminder that he’s stuck on this learning curve, one step forward, two steps back. Sixty centuries of learning and no lesson that comes close to solving his problem--his problem, probably dithering around a bookshop in SoHo, a shop that has no business existing in the modern age. Arguing with customers. Drinking, drinking fucking tea like nothing’s the matter.

He slams his fist on the wheel and the Bentley chokes in response, insulted and not a little scared although it knows he’d never truly harm it. He soothes it with a small pat on the dashboard. The scowl stapled to his face weakens to a grimace when it chugs back to normal speed--about a hundred and fifty on open Scottish roads with only the occasional tourist or sheep to scramble into hedges when he roars around hairpin turns, not sliding a fraction.

£1,500, he paid. Most of them, still driveable seventy years after purchase.

His, of course, does not know the meaning of rust. Nothing on it decays because he wills it so. Nothing is broken. No dent that can’t be rectified without a snap of his fingers or the rare breath, no, the Bentley is immortal by proximity to his own immortality, by his imagining that it can go on, and it does. Crowley is in control, no need to think, to feel, to regret. Nothing.

This car has braved hellfire for him, for reasons that made the journey oh-so clear, even achievable, in his wildest dreams. And so, the wildest occurred and still, the passenger’s side is empty.

Stopping for petrol isn’t something he needs to do, of course. He hasn’t topped off the tank since 1945, celebrating a drive without having to cloak his headlights for the first time in five years. The stars were out that night, too. The seat wasn’t empty. They were comfortably drunk from an evening at one of those little clubs Aziraphale had--

He steps out somewhere miles from the border. The stars are not shining, excepting the glaring ball of fire that greeted him this morning with the most accusing glower leveled at him in his very long life. At least since he spiked a petit-four off the plate of a certain angel at the table of Marie Antoinette, herself, and this despite a lengthy (and drunken) explanation of why he avoided sweets (except for ‘just a bite of yours,’ of course).

The queen’s eyes landed appreciatively on his impeccable silk coat, triggering a withering scowl at the side of his face from the owner of the cake he’d purloined. The ascot, fussy and ruffled though it was, did nothing to hide the flush down a pale neck. Strong as it was, the wine did not diffuse but ignited the argument they held outside on the very balcony where the queen would address judges and jury, alike. An argument about nothing, because they had confessed nothing, because Aziraphale did not apply ideas like envy to himself, even if Crowley was still fighting to finally close the circle. An argument was one of the few safe spaces they had. Aziraphale’s will would always win out. The rare moments where he hadn’t gotten his way, he held against Crowley as if even token resistance were unforgivable. Swapping indignation between the two of them like it was a game.

This is not a game. Not one whose rules he knows by heart.

They've gone so long protecting themselves from the idea of change, he’s starting to panic about whether they can ever talk it out, and he’s only felt fear a handful of times in his life. In all honesty, it’s always been a consequence of the problem in mind.

The tank full, he replaces the nozzle and ignores the gentleman admiring the Bentley with no small amount of greed in his eyes, or cash in his pockets. He leaves him with an unnecessary screech of tires and belch of black smoke that may or may not have been summoned from Hell, itself. His mistress will later call him to tell him the good news. He’ll pay for it with his marriage. Crowley makes sure of it.

There’s nothing like a quiet drive through the countryside to clear one’s mind, but when an automobile is semi-sentient and occasionally scared for its life, it takes the driver barely the occasional gamma wave to keep herself from gliding straight into a culvert or a tree. Or, in one case, a truck packed with Syrian immigrants shivering in a cold they never anticipated. He warms the trailer with a thought, fills their bellies with something rib-sticking, and sends all the whimpering children to sleep. It takes its toll, unlike the booths he slides through to the shrieks of the clerks.

Yemen. Tangier.

When?

Thousands of years ago. Why not a hundred? Fifty?

Why not the Beginning?

Why a ring, why a snake, why dance around the subject like a waltz on the head of a pin?

Why settle in London, where he knew Crowley had been lurking (sleeping) for at least months? They’ve been orbiting each other for centuries with no obvious answer and yet he loathes himself for walking away from that blasted ring, wondering if Aziraphale left it on the desert floor instead of tucking it into his purse, knowing he’ll eventually forgive him. He knows him. Why did he let someone know him?

But he wants him to Know him. Capital ‘K,’ Biblical meaning. Song of Solomon stuff.

_Do not gaze upon me because I am dark_

_Because the Sun has looked upon me._

The sun certainly had something to say, now, glaring down on him in celestial mockery. Slow burn. Oh, Hell, why did he ever read poetry?

Because _he_ stood beside him, even crowded him, practically jumping out of his skin over the most romantic scroll he’d ever found in that bazaar. The human expression of erotic, anticipatory love. Eros. Something that could never approach the Agape he’d known his entire life, the very thing ripped from Crowley in the Fall. Something obtainable, in a literal sense because he bought it for him. Because he delighted in his delight.

The glow of an angel’s happiness should be peaceful, soothing, for all Crowley knows, but Aziraphale’s happiness is as feral as his appetites, and he's lost in that wilderness with the barest promise of salvation by a smile, the smallest favor like a tribute to a capricious Pagan god. First editions in peak condition, signed. Intimate. Untouched.

But again, let’s not wax poetic. Leave that to… to Keats. Yeats? Whichever lonely bastard wrote best when rejected. Crowley’s in peak condition! Just look at his car, spotless, a picture of mental health. Now if only he could stop thinking in sappy quotes.

It didn’t help that Aziraphale read to him, whatever he’d bought, on those long nights they'd otherwise have spent alone, like most immortals do. Once the Arrangement was fully established and his access to Aziraphale’s wine cellar unrestricted, something was required to fill the time between their playful bickering and passing comments on the notes of different vintages. Utilizing that same scroll, thousands of years speaking secrets untold. Less so, now, of course, it had somewhat dropped off in the 60s when Aziraphale finally admitted it. Almost. Almost a balm to Crowley’s aching spirit, a problem for his solution.

The passenger’s seat is empty until he throws Beethoven’s Symphony 7: Best of Queen to bounce on the leather so it stops gaping at him, waiting to be filled with the familiar. Whatever is familiar, whatever “freedom” now means.

He needs another drink, he decides. The best decisions are made over wine, aren’t they? Couldn’t hurt. The fact of his solitude is nothing compared to the centuries any immortal will spend anonymous, alone, and undeniably bored.


	6. What's a Few Longing Glances Between Friends?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ducks, drinking, and suppressing those niggling little thoughts with that age-old defense: it's just the wine, talking.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Long updates because work is cray. Should be a tad faster, now.

**The Bookshop - 1998, Ten Years before Crowley Delivers--Not** **_Delivers_ ** **Delivers--the Antichrist**

"I miss when they lined the amphorae with lead," Aziraphale said around the rim of his glass, his nose almost taking a bath.

The two of them were as compressed as possible into the furniture, a procedure that had taken almost as long as it takes America to grant a single civil right. In Crowley's case, he appeared two have broken a few ribs to coil on the couch, buried in layers upon layers of blankets like a sarcophagus. Aziraphale had dutifully stacked them atop him. At first because he hadn’t realized, in his drunken state, that the seat was wholly occupied, and then because the couch released a pleasant hiss with each additional load.

"Lead’s poisonous, angel," said a pillow covered in red hair, “thasss why they, th’inf’rth… infertiti… no babies. Poisons people.”

"Not me," he sniffed, “although later on, they really did get filtration down. I still prefer the ox blood method, despite harming animals being passé."

"Y’re a pargon--a paragon of angelic mercy," the couch said before its denizen emerged, claws out, from his cozy domain. Aziraphale ignored him.

"I went to a tasting of Chateauneuf-du-pape in '42, for instance, excellent vintage, _formidable_ , not even the Nazis could--”

“Oh, _fuck a duck_ \--” Crowley cussed as he fumbled with a glass of wine and flung a 1937 Zinfandel in a fan over the parlor.

“You’re miracling that out!”

“Yeah, yeah.” He snapped his fingers and the stain never was.

Aziraphale visibly relaxed. In fact, if he had relaxed any further into this chair, they would become one. Chaise-iraphale. A Chaircipality, a, a... give him a minute. He was comfortable. Crowley was there, the wine was flowing as pleasantly as thoughts of Crowley were flowing with wine and Crowley, his two favorite things, come to think of it, and… it was all sort of jumbled up there, like dice in a cup. Every result was snake eyes. He thought it might be that he hadn’t really dropped the glass from his lips, nor his gaze from the couch where his guest now settled, seemingly swimming back into the nest of pillows with another glass. His jacket was somewhere on the floor. The boatneck of his black top left his shoulders bare, naked collarbone just above the ripple of wine as if he were taking a dip.

Aziraphale cleared his throat painfully and Crowley glanced at him, pausing before he took a sip. Red wine is dry. An excuse, if not a great one. He looked away, slipped his hand into his pocket and his expression softened. He appraised him in a way that made Crowley squint.

“Ducks,” he said, mind wandering, or careening, more like. He fell back, staring at the ceiling.

“Yes.” Aziraphale smiled, cradling his glass. “Fluffy little ducklings… you know, the other day--”

“Awf’ly hard to fuck a duck.”

“Pardon?”

“I said, awfully hard to--”

“No, no, I heard that.” Aziraphale swatted his hand out as if to shoo the curse away. “The, the other… what?”

“Corkscrews.” Crowley wobbled a bit as he sat up. “They’ve got corkscrew v’ginas… lotta,” he burped, “lots of rape with duck. Ducks.” Aziraphale grimaced, smacking his lips and swirling his glass as if the bitter taste of the conversation would dissolve in it. It did not.

“I don’t have the, I need to sober up if we’re going to, to,”

“Nah, s’alright.” Crowley glared at his glass. “But think,” he said, swooning a little. He watched the dizzying chaos of bubbles as Aziraphale’s grip on his stem tightened near to breaking. Rococo silk. “You wonder, it’s… s’not so kind, nature. For the work th’Almighty put into it,” he huffed. The length of silence that followed was longer than the word count of this narrative.

Crowley shivered. He flicked his lip with his thumb, sat back into the couch and then up, elbows tight on his knees, toes tapping, and then slackening his posture, dipping and shifting like a defenseless Christmas tree ornament at the mercy of a cat. He jittered, and yet he couldn’t move. Aziraphale’s _Keep him from leaving_ alarm began to ring in earnest. He struggled to find the thread to pull.

“S’pose… in Hell…” he wondered aloud. Crowley shook his head fiercely.

“No, no, no, no, nevermmm… dun worry ‘bout it, jus’, just keep being…” He gestured at all of him.

“... an angel?”

He snapped his fingers,

“Spot on!”

He smiled, so Aziraphale smiled, but Crowley’s smile was far more genuine, and he’d only realize the origin of the twinge in his chest much later.

When it came to these things, these unpleasant things, talking about Hell, for instance, Crowley's reluctance to complain about anything more than the bureaucracy was palpable. He shared just enough about his Fall to reassure Aziraphale that being damned wasn't that bad. Once you'd gotten used to it, of course.

Still, the talk of tempting, wiling, and occasionally (although he didn’t seem to like it, supporting our next point) murdering seemed incongruent with what Aziraphale knew about Crowley. He was softer than any angel. At its most tempting pinnacles, he knew what they had was strong because it was soft: the trust went both ways with their tempting and thwarting, the rendezvouses in the park, these little clandestine meetings in the comfort of his home, which Heaven viewed as a quaint but serious fortress. He enjoyed opening his door a great deal more than closing it. That was the result (the purpose?) of their affair.

 _Arrangement,_ he stiffly corrected. Whatever it was. Don’t name it. Names are powerful things.

Wine warmed his cheeks, his thoughts wobbled around the fondness on Crowley's face as they moved on to other things. In spite of the previous subject, he corralled them into pleasantries, even jokes. Aziraphale relaxed. He felt safe to speak.

Having Crowley over was the highlight of his day, even his decade, bolstered by the facts that his visits often came with lunch at the Ritz and vintages he’d sworn he'd never open. But then, he always capitulated when it came to intoxication. The buzz of conversation. Crowley, close by, soothed him. His very presence was a reprieve from Heaven's rigid definition of an "angel.” Crowley was someone who could never view him as anything less, and a demon would have the right perspective on that, after all. “Keep an eye on him,” Heaven commanded. Aziraphale spared far more than that. Call it loving his work. Keep your employer close, and your hereditary enemy closer. Very close. Close enough to steal from his plate when it had the misfortune of hosting an ill-fated petit-four.

Crowley gave him everything he wanted (and a great deal more) with his offers. He didn't probe that thought. He denied himself everything but his company and the now-usual indulgences.

"'42, what were you doing in, in '42?" Crowley slurred as he turned the second bottle in his hand. Aziraphale zapped back to the present, blinking. He stared ahead, where Crowley shifted and broke eye contact.

"Don't remember,” he mumbled, “something... something about the Resistance."

“Awful people, the French...” Crowley spat, sliding lower on the couch. “Must've, mus' not've needed my help. That time." Aziraphale’s dimples showed. He was wallowing.

"No," he said, with middling confidence, "but you're always welcome, to, to,"

"Rescue you?" Crowley grinned, almost tottering over the edge of the couch. Aziraphale demurred,

"No, my dear, I was going to say accompany me."

Crowley's crow’s feet crinkled. He smacked his lips of a metallic taste and stared at the bottle as if he were hallucinating. It had happened before.

"That's, thassa good, a good idea. Better n', better n',"

"Better than anything," Aziraphale thought aloud, perhaps intended, _better than being alone_ , but his brain struggled to keep up with his mouth, ego with subconscious. Crowley had no more words on the matter

Soon, they were back on ducks, and it was almost as if no unpleasantness had occurred, although perhaps that wasn’t quite accurate. They were distracting rather than avoiding each other. Not simply as coworkers, or co-conspirators, or as fellow proletariats consuming the opiates of the masses via bottles upon bottles of wine. It was as friends. Very close friends very closely distracting one another from something not quite ready.

Nonetheless, it was there. Hovering quietly, assuredly dangerous. It hung between them like the gaze over a handshake that lasts a few seconds too long.

In the wee hours of first light they were still drinking. The mood had lifted, then sunk, then soared, and finally crashed into an argument that may or may not have wound up in someone’s True Voice boldly daring they settle the issue, once and for all.

This was, as humanity had long wondered, the debate over whether duck beaks are made of bone or keratin. Aziraphale convinced him to walk to St. James. It was cold. Blistering cold, and Crowley wasn’t suited for this sort of weather, not least because he’d forgotten his jacket, boldly declaring that his nape and collarbone were “hot enough to shame the sun.” Aziraphale giggled. They tottered into each other with yet more blustery declarations, him clearly shivering until Aziraphale said enough was enough and unsheathed one white wing to wrap around him in plain view at four in the morning.

Crowley shut up. He stopped shivering. Aziraphale counted this as a double-win, and on sight of the ducks, loudly pronounced that he was carrying a few slices of rye, and a bottle of it, too.

**The Bookshop - Present Day, But in a Detached Sort of Way**

As far as mornings after go, Aziraphale still isn’t sure what to make of it. For one, he decided to sleep. Not his usual nightly ritual, when humans lie inert and he can finish a few books or one Hugo. It was something about sorting himself out through dreams, but he dreamt nothing. No comforting messages, no gentle, guiding hands through his turbulent subconscious. No course laid out for him. No warnings or prophecies or even nightmares, as he thought he might have. No. Aziraphale slept, for all the good it did him, like a baby, and it wasn’t Fair at all.

He gets up, immediately disliking the stiffness to his limbs from getting a good ten hours in, and plods downstairs to make himself tea, only to be immediately arrested on the stairs.

Crowley’s scent is _everywhere._

It’s ingrained in the couch, the kitchen, the pillows, the wine rack, even the locked cases where his most prized, never-touched books lie. It’s on his clothes. His face. He could miracle it away but this past day hasn’t been about the benefit of miracles. Given his week thus far, he’s rather miracled out, opting for the traditional method of an electric kettle Crowley got him--

No. The _traditional_ traditional method. He turns on the gas and places the old steel kettle he got as a treat a few years after the Blitz, when things started picking up again. Support your local businesses. He stares at the backsplash above the tiny sink, the blue and white doves with their blue and white flowers for only a second, he swears, and then the kettle’s whistling, and there’s more things to _do_.

Perhaps he took for granted the decadence and creativity and lofty philosophies humanity offered him through the millennia, all of the drudgery they suffered to get there. For all the capital “G” Good he did in the name of Heaven, it was of course smaller than the smaller things, smaller than good pastries and worn, comfy clothes, that brought him closer to humanity. Things like having to take the bus instead of flying, cooking instead of miracling reservations, hiding things when he shouldn’t. Aziraphale had gotten quite good at being human without realizing it along the way, up to and after the words, “I’m soft!”

Crowley had been there the entire time, but he’d been soft since the Beginning. Open. It was Aziraphale who’d thrown himself deeper and deeper into hedonism and sentimentality and lied about it, along the way.

He doesn’t like the implications there.

In some ways, new ways, he doesn’t like that he seems Built for this. There is no manual for an angel gone rogue, he’s had to write one as he goes, for the good it’s worth when he’s already cocked up the one good thing about it. The main It. What he fought for, against Fate and Satan and God, Herself. Alongside Adam. Adam, who placed them at each other’s side when Time restarted as if it were the natural order.

Customers. He needs customers. Sour as his mood is, even bickering over parting with one of his precious books seems like a vacation from his thoughts.

Vacation. Well, he has plenty of time to himself, now.

He flips the sign. He wipes down the counter and waits, and waits.

He can’t get used to Waiting.

Waiting means there’s (hopefully) a Next, and a Next means Anticipation, something he can’t abide when he can barely direct his thoughts between shining a cabinet and fixing another cup of tea without tripping over thoughts of Crowley. There’s no difference from each mundane action without some snide commentary following him, room to room, begging him to close and drink already, to debate, to evoke a little of that passion that so confused his fellow angels when they first saw it in him, there, on that tarmac, a hand briefly squeezing his in reassurance. Gabriel’s disgust at sushi. The temptation of oysters--daring to hold each other up under the crushing weight of the Unknown.

The bell rings, a customer enters. The obligatory greeting slides between them like she slides past him, nervous, sensing his angst. Humans aren’t generally good at that sort of thing, in comparison, so it must be rolling off him like, like waves. Not like water off a--

The bell rings. His customer has gone without purchasing anything. Normally, he would count this as a success, rig the books, send them off to his accountant a hundred and fifty years posthumously and pat himself on the back for keeping his collection intact another day. Intact, but not complete.

He fidgets. Pets his pocket. Sucks his teeth, sounding an awful lot like a hiss, but there’s not much you can do to avoid making connections when the topic is all you’ve got left.

He looks at the clock.

Ten minutes have passed since he left the kitchen.

**Somewhere on the A68 in Northumberland Nat’l Park - Present Day**

Crowley’s apartment is empty, so he doesn’t really want to go there.

He doesn’t take in the scenery (it’s a bit dull, compared to the empires he’s seen rise and fall).

He doesn’t take in the fresh air, avoiding his lungs entirely, lest they do that thing with the diaphragm and get all huffy and sad and let things _out_.

He is still, however, driving at about thrice the speed limit, towards a vague reason too close to another reason he’s determined to block out. A reason a half mile from his luxurious, solidly-equipped, perfect-for-moping and coldly, utterly _empty_ home. It’s still autumn. The leaves are turning. DEATH creeps HIS slow way across the land. Crowley swears he spies HIM sidling through the trees, cradling each leaf and zapping away its chlorophyll to Parts Unknown. Even discorporated, Crowley never passed through The Other Side, something every human has to do as a basic requirement.

Been to Purgatory, though. It was… okay. Better than the Malbolge, certainly. One long barfight and no good cocktails, not even an Old Fashioned on the menu: all Stella Artois, crafted in the finest horse bladders of the Nine Circles.

Maybe a trip is what he needs. Let off a little steam, alone in the stars. Maybe destroy a few. A select two.

The thought arrests itself like a Monty Python sketch when his mind inevitably, like the course of the Bentley on automatic toward SoHo, guides him back to Aziraphale. Spending as much time as they have together, _holding_ hands, pointing out the bloody stars some angel mucked up. Binary systems. How could one ever think they’d work out? Alpha Centauri, a waltz of destruction suggesting the barest possibility of a black hole. How he ever picked there, in a fit of desperation, he strictly refuses to acknowledge. But he can’t help himself. Now the A1.

**The A1 - Seconds after Crowley’s Realization of Where the Bentley Is Suggesting He Go**

He redirects, a hard left. The coast sounds like a good place to lurk and mope and maybe execute a few temptations to clear his mind. Tourists are always fair game. Nothing sounds better than detouring a few gift shop junkies directly off a cliff.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> But really, is it bone or keratin?


	7. Awful People, the French

**London, and then Paris (Begrudgingly) - 1909**

Waking from a 30-year nap to a direct summons from Hell did not make Crowley's debut into the 20th century any better, nor did the assignment of ensuring a certain young nun contracted tuberculosis. Nor her location in France. Crowley hadn’t touched France since the first Revolution and stood by her decision. England suited her better than anywhere else on Earth.

Her body was numb, her face white and ghostly as she drifted through her dingy apartments. The gaslight wavered on, barely reflecting on windows smudged with coal dust, as black as the damask drapes because what else would she have picked? Black bedclothes. Black silk robe. Chairs overturned from the stumble into bed, decades ago, and pointing to the vanity like a broken compass with its surface a panoply of bottles and pipes and sweet-smelling sin. A gothic romance, minus the love interest. Pity.

Thirty years of unchecked growth had left her room looking rather like Rapunzel’s tower and she snipped off the tresses with cold resolution, watched them tumble to the floor in the mirror with the sense of an era coming to a close. Somebody liked her with long hair.

She cut a little more, evening it out, looming over the impotent carmine curls like so many years passed paralyzed, anaesthetized, and the mass of hair painted the rugs and twisted sheets in long sweeps and gnarls, a Grimm's fairytale. Not that she read. Most stories she knew had been read to her in the comfort of wine and candles and a soft, sweet voice while she dozed a doze that required no dose, but none of that had made it into her dreams, no. She’d slept like the dead, like she'd hoped, subconscious subdued and her regular fantasies just out of reach.

Work: a welcome enough distraction. She entered the convent, fulfilled her duty, and left for Paris. She didn't feel good about it, insofar as demons can. The habit itched. Her skin crawled and burned on the sacred ground and she wondered what the abbess must have thought about the young nun dancing a jig across the courtyard as though her feet were on fire.

Crowley always had preferred the comedies.

-

A bawdy show at the Opéra Garnier was just what she needed. The opulence of the Napoleonic architecture was definitively more lighthearted than the gloomy convent, and the glow of gaslight suited her complexion in a way that had her nearly purring with the glance of every mirror. A little vanity to boost her self-esteem. Murdering nuns was not her usual schtick, more Hastur’s or, if Head Office wanted a really horrorshow, Ligur, but then again, Crowley is better suited to these subtle temptations and scale-tippings. Bewitch with lipstick. A cheat on a coin toss. A thousand little things and more. Her mind inevitably careened into the dark age of decades of paperwork that mysteriously appeared with no one to hand it in.

_Stop that._

She shook her head of troublesome thoughts, persons she had not dreamt about. No. Work should be the cure-all for the pent-up and pining.

Clearing her mind proved somewhat complicated due to the utter bore that was her choice of company for the evening. She was draped on the arm of a gentleman, a tycoon of… something. He treated and spoke of her to his cronies as if she were a pet, but Crowley didn’t feel much like talking and he was guaranteed to have box seats, nevermind old enough that putting him to sleep with a small miracle would not arouse suspicion. He self-aggrandized, revealed with every action and word that he was used to getting what he wanted as if he’d paid for her company. He had already tried twice to grope her elegantly-clothed arse. Little did he know, he now carried the herpesviral infection. Herpes: the serpent’s choice pharmakon for life’s little indignations.

It’s easy enough to ignore and be ignored when nothing else is at play. She was quiet, as he preferred, turning her head from a trifling conversation to disguise a yawn behind her fan, eyes drifting lazily to the grand staircase.

There, clutching the swirling balustrade, still as the marble statues, stood Aziraphale. He quickly turned and ascended.

It hit like a punch in the solar plexus.

(Not that she could feel, corset tight as it was.)

Without a word, she gave chase. Her shoulders bent forward, she fled her date as if he carried the plague (which, of course, he now did). The marble stairs slipped under her heels, skirts tumbling behind her in a black feathery flash. Her cheeks bloomed red. She was a spectacle, a conversation piece, often losing her footing as she careened between guests in her pursuit: a Cinderella-chasseuse, but even so, Aziraphale's never walked fast enough that she couldn't catch up. And catch him, she did. Just outside of his box

Her heart swelled and she felt miracled whole again, blood racing after three decades of desolate dormancy with the flushing embarrassment that he’d watched her panting after him. Everyone had. They were still gawking at her as they passed by.

He betrayed no expression. Barely even glanced at her, but had she looked away from his face for one second, she might have noticed the way his hands shook as he wordlessly held the curtain aside for her to enter his box, even when she was still halfway down the hall. He stood behind her seat ( _her_ seat) like a gentleman does. Gaslight wavered from the corner and rendered her shadow as scattered and nervous as she. The theatre thrummed with anticipation, the orchestra a cacophony in preparation. He remained standing, she realized, because a gentleman waits for a lady to seat herself. She stalled. He eyed her from his periphery.

“Dear girl,” he began, and her shoulders clenched. He watched every movement, carefully restrained. “You look absolutely ravishing,” he finished softly, sitting as she did. He kept himself tightly within the bounds of his own chair.

Her gown was a raven silk _robe sylphide_ that clung to her body like the skin of an apple. Stripes of embroidery followed her curves, mimicking the holes on a violin, and he was sure she’d miracled her waist to be as small as it was. A plumed hat dripping with a fine black veil concealed her eyes from all but the most persistent gentleman. The longer he looked, the longer she hid. The distance between them was a staggering six inches, but even sitting in silence relieved some deep ache. It contracted and pulsed inside her, unravelling. She felt she would scratch out of her skin as she vaguely tuned in to the first act, bristling at the French language and scalded by the vibrant sexuality of the titular seductress. By Aziraphale’s choice of her company.

Not that they’d collaborated on the show. _Carmen_ was not her favorite by any means, even if she did enjoy the choruses. Tragically sensual but then Aziraphale had always been a sucker for that, little did she know the truth of the extent--of course he would love a tragedy. Pining. Teasing. Doomed love. If only, if only, the woodpecker cried, that the branch of the tree were as soft as the sky.

Her hunger, unbeknownst to her, was nothing compared to the appetites of the angel sitting next to her, rigid as stone yet underneath, a lava flow. Molten and blistering and deathly bright. She could feel his heat through that prickling self-deprecation but couldn’t name the cause. Embarrassment, maybe. He was assuredly nervous. Sweating. Silent. She was drunk on the scent of apprehension, of some sort of… expectation. Was she meant to apologize? Her request had by no means been unwarranted. Even he must have understood the professional fears she faced in keeping his company, amid many, many, myriad fears, and the absolute _preference_ in keeping on with him should have sent a message. He’d certainly been blunt about his. Never raising a hand in violence. Never quite giving her what she asked for, if he indulged her at all.

He wanted to flee but he knew well enough she’d chase him, not to mention he’d let her catch him and, _oh,_ that collided with that obnoxious hope she'd tried so hard to keep boxed.

He kept his hand firmly in his pocket. Her hands were free, fidgeting, tempted.

Shoot your shot, she thought, albeit in less modern terms.

A silken glove slithered across the back of his seat in a calculated stretch, just barely brushing his hair as she slowed her heartbeat to a believable pace for sleep. Don’t imagine toying with those blond locks. Don’t imagine them in your fist, or his in yours, around your waist in a private waltz, the lights dimming so he can't see the rapture and fear on your face. The roiling delight and terror were not assuaged by the fact that he never moved, not once: not to breathe, not for the intermission, not until the audience was already shuffling into the corridors. Her hand still across his seat. Hours. He made to lift it and fold it back into her lap, then stopped himself.

He watched her feign sleep for too long. Her face had changed, thinner than previous years, marked by deeper shadows and yet delectably flushed a shade beyond mere rouge. He analyzed her with a gentle frown. His attentions stoked her self-consciousness and she thought pitifully that now was the time to part. Her nose twitched and her lashes fluttered at the clang of the orchestra clearing out.

"It's over, my dear," he murmured.

On cue, she yawned, rolled her shoulders. Ever an actress, given direction. They returned to utter silence until the corridor emptied.

The light drizzle outside put her velvet hat at risk, but within the first few drops, an umbrella tipped over her head. Aziraphale crowded close to share the space.

Crowley practically melted into the gutter. An out-of-body experience, astral projection. Perhaps she hadn’t woken up at all, and these were the torturous good dreams sliding past decades of suppression. Her dress brushed his side whenever the moment presented itself: dodging carriages, splashes, puddles of mud, and her small, contented sighs filled the air like so many drops of rain. They chatted easily, avoiding what they had to as she spoke with a distance in her voice as far as she felt from life’s problems, drunk on his presence and his closeness and his heat. Out of nowhere, he said,

“It has been boring without you, I must admit.” She cocked her hat to look up at him. He carried the faintest smile. “What?” he chuckled, insincere. His eyes flickered. “It was rather hard with no one to share all those, those little things. My cabinet is absolutely full, I went on a tour of Japan and discovered a sake I thought you might like." He'd thought for too long he would pour it out in libation, but the impetus to accept his fears never came. Hope. Blasted hope in a bottle. He faced the ground, "You know I haven’t been on a date in thirty years?” he said, sounding miffed, and then he froze, eyes wide. He’d tipped his hand.

She stopped in the street, cracking the smallest, dangerous smile. Aziraphale blushed and tripped backward to keep his umbrella over her. Her teeth poked through, lopsided, gauging.

“I sprinkled in more than the occasional assignment, you know. Your reputation, and all,” he sniffed, gathering himself into his regular holier-than-thou comportment.

Crowley had sworn off saying _thank you_ long before its English iteration.

“A date,” she purred, “I haven’t been on a date since then, either. Although one could hardly call what happened,”

He interrupted her brusquely, "I am glad you’re…” They stood under the eve of a bar and she waited for him to say it, but he didn’t. Of course he didn’t. “I received the last assignment and I must say, I wasn’t looking forward to it. I’m happy you’re... You’re much better than me at that sort of thing. The world’s, that is, your work, it’s better with you here to do it.” There it was, maybe. They began to walk again, Crowley processing at the speed of a horse with a limp. He veered the subject, minutely. “Pity she had to die so young, although word from Above says she's supposed to be canonized."

"Well, there you go," Crowley said. She did not say, _You might have taken care of that one for me, if you were going to be here, anyway,_ but they had not been on speaking terms. Of course, she'd been utterly absent through most of that, with a little help. Trusting him without a word passing between them.

She twirled a finger in a rogue ringlet of fiery hair. As they entered _La Fée Verte,_ a free table miraculously appeared.

“You seem a little…" he bit his lip, "maybe take a minute? That can’t have been pleasant, even for you.”

“Thought you said I was good at my job?”

He sighed, “See the sights, take in the city.”

_Spend a little more time with you, hmm?_

“Might do,” she said, then stiffened.

Without warning, she shrugged into the wall of bodies. A man nearby muttered something foul under his breath, something that made Aziraphale frown an angelic and therefore thunderous frown. The air pulsed briefly with Heavenly disapproval, like a single ripple in a pond, and the throng in the bar quieted for a half-second as though waiting for the next wave to hit. Men looked askance at the blond gentleman with his hand on the waist of the lady in black. They didn’t meet his eyes, wise enough, but parted for her graciously as he followed her silently, tight to her, and by the time they neared their table he was practically wrapped around her. He pulled out her seat.

She gathered her skirts and shuffled them violently, a nervous crinkling of black silk. He flicked back his coattails. Their drinks came and, hardly paying attention to his own, he took in the show of Crowley gulping absinthe like water at an oasis accompanied by a cigarette in a long gold and black holder, not just for show like she usually did. She smoothed her black veil with a slender hand. Behind it her eyes blazed. Aziraphale followed her gaze to the man vying for space at the bar where they’d stood, his cheeks grossly flushed as he shouted his order over the heads and into the ears of anyone who dared stand near.

She practically drank _at_ him.

"Awful people, the French,” she muttered, exhaling smoke and Evil. “Saw a man teaching his toddler to piss in the street. Caught someone's skirt in the spray." She hiccupped, swaying, licking her lips of the taste of anise. Aziraphale's eyes flicked to her.

"I must say, I wasn't expecting the Revolution to go quite as it did. Or the others."

She hiccupped.

"Awful people, the French."

**An Aside**

The ongoing debate as to whether Crowley and Aziraphale being typically men must mean they're homosexual men--especially Aziraphale--is more than a little pointless. Angels and demons have no gender or inherent need for sex (except, perhaps, Asmodeus). However, anyone who interacts with them in any capacity would correctly assume they are, albeit an angel and a demon, very, _very_ English.

**Back to it**

Aziraphale took another hard left. “They have managed to perfect absinthe, at least. Who knew a drink called ‘worm’ and ‘wood’ could become so popular.”

“Doesn’t mean ‘worm,’” Crowley said.

“Beg pardon?”

“It’s not ‘worm,’ it comes from Germanic.”

“Well,” he chuckled tightly, "agree to disagree.”

“I will not. It comes from ‘wermode,’ that’s where they got ‘vermouth,’ too. You should know, you’re a book- _verm._ ”

He hid his smile and swirled his drink. The milky substance tumbled and twirled like vines of incense, a green censer. Holy and purifying and yet entirely her realm. Casual debates between them weren’t usually so inflected with Crowley’s bitterness, but then she had good reason to be in a foul mood. Top it with sugar. A fight so sweet.

“I would ask, then, where you learned this.” His dimples showed in a grin that did not alleviate the tension as evidenced by her raised brow, but her eyes twinkled when they met his ever brief, before she tilted her drink back and turned again toward the man at the bar. It was normally he who broke it off. He took a deep draught and clenched the napkin in his lap.

“I was there,” she replied drily. “I invented it.” Dry as vermouth.

He regarded her with a bemused expression. Her shoulders shifted.

“Maybe not created-created, but I was there. In the room. Er, camp. ‘Worm’ wormwood is a folk etymology, to be sure.”

Her brow furrowed as her gaze kept pointed away from him. He devoured the opportunity--when Crowley wasn’t looking, he often was. The gaslight illuminated the golden ridges of her cheeks, lit a scintillating gold in her eyes that doubled the gold of her glare, and a red ringlet displaced in her desperate hunt through the halls of l’Opera Garnier tempted him more in that moment than any drink she’d ever offered. Consiliatory, he told himself, that was the word for it, the madness to the method of softly pushing it behind her ear and seeing her startle, distract her from her troubles (or at worst give her a new one, he thought anxiously). See him in that old light, her face under his fingers. That strange light, suggestive like the flicker of the lamps above. Her hope, lamentation. Her longing so intoxicating, tempting, her lips parting and red and inviting. 30 years without sight of her and now he was overcome, speaking too much because otherwise he'd be speechless. She may as well have died and appeared to haunt him.

He coughed. _Have to stop reading the Brontes._

Too comfortable to watch her after so long, to simply have her there, _existing_ in his space, or indeed existing at all, he settled into his hand, softened by the absinthe, his mind dancing. Waxing poetic past all self-control. She didn’t return his gaze. Although it was hard to look away, he joined her glare at the man, drunk beyond reason, tripping into another with a small yelp.

"My dear, you didn't have to do that," he said mildly.

Crowley tipped her hat down and opened the hand that held her cigarette, gesturing vaguely.

"He did that,” she sneered, “he dared touch me and then called me a bitch, but he was wrong." She sipped her absinthe, took a drag. "I'm not just a bitch. I'm a vindictive bitch."

Aziraphale leaned in conspiratorily.

"He's going to know they're missing when he sobers up."

With a reluctant snap of her fingers, Crowley returned the man's testicles. She watched him stumble again, careening into another customer with a high collar and his cap pulled down, his shabby brown coat ill-fitting for the opulence of La Fée Verte. He quickly ducked through the crowd, out the door.

She side-eyed Aziraphale.

"He's going to miss his wallet, too, you know,"

"Yes." He smiled into the glass. "That, too."

Crowley perched her chin in her hand, draped over the table, and snorted as she watched him delicately set his empty goblet down. It replenished with a twitch of her silken glove against the base, fingertip just barely brushing his own. Lightning zipped through his body. He inhaled and took another drink, mouth full and gulping without tasting and she smiled a curious smile at his sudden gluttony. Neverending absinthe. That would be a demon’s version of Jesus’ Number Two hit, wouldn’t it?

He coughed. "A rather frivolous miracle, my dear.”

"Frivolousss," she agreed.

"And kind--probably not kosher for a demon, at that."

"No, more like pickpocketing, that." She grinned, tipping back a little, giving him space as her cheeks flushed to her ears. Aziraphale's smile widened earnestly, his eyes shining.

"Exactly right."

After they were both good and drunk, they took a stroll along the Seine with a flask of gin, watching (judging) the City of Light in a haze of fog and liquor as they pointed out where old haunts had stood before Haussman’s reign. Together, they remained well hidden from prying eyes by his umbrella, her veil. They visited the little street in Montmartre where her dismal rooms were during the Revolution, where she'd hosted him after his need for crêpes had been satisfied. They didn't spend much time there.

Aziraphale kept hesitating. Crowley held her breath, thinking this was the moment they parted. He would touch his pocket as though to pull out his watch, _Terribly sorry, my dear, I’ve a date with twelve thousand pages of Proust, see you next century,_ but whenever he caught her looking, his hand recoiled as though burned.

“You don’t have to escort me,” she said, offering him an out. His lips parted in confusion, almost hurt.

“It’s been so lovely to see you again,” he whispered in a rush, his voice rough and urgent in certain denouement to the feared conclusion. She began to withdraw with an acid taste in her mouth. Bile. Humors out of order. He darted for her hand and she jolted, fingers crushed in white knuckles so hard that she winced and froze against his side, cursing her glove for separating them. He leaned in. His breath stirred the fog with heat and she could nearly taste it. _Another five inches or so_. “I don’t mean to force you,” he explained, dropping her hand but not taking his eyes off it. She held it covetously, pressed to her chest. He grimaced, his voice low. “It’s been so long since we met. St. James. You must know what I thought," he said with zero accusation and enough desperation that her eyes flickered, her mouth dropped open in confused elation. "It was alarming, you must understand, that rather than asking for… to arrange something,” he worded carefully, “to suddenly request that, I thought...”

_You didn’t ask for my help. You would rather leave me entirely._

Crowley did not want to have this conversation. He saw it in her eyes and let it drop. His hand fell to his side and she sneered, struggling to maintain ambivalence and visibly failing. Her hands shook. Her voice shook.

“If you have somewhere to be, don’t let me keep you.”

“No!” Her eyes narrowed. “No, no, that’s not it.” They had walked all the way around to the Champs Elysées and shops were just opening. His eyes alighted on a sign and he asked her, “Given that we must eventually go our separate ways,” Crowley’s shoulders tensed, “it would be negligent of me to leave a lady undefended.”

And that’s how Crowley found herself in a jeweler's, bewildered after ten minutes of nerve-wracking conversation and ten hours of traversing the entire city to find him still at her side, pointing at a long and glittering glass case as the clerk doted on them, surprised they weren’t looking for a ring, given Crowley’s apparent youth. Twenty-five never goes out of style. He gingerly removed a blue velvet display crowned with a golden hat pin. Aziraphale nodded indulgently as the salesman practiced his craft but Crowley ignored him, perhaps because everything since she’d first encountered Aziraphale at the opera house sounded vaguely like it had traveled through water. Through rain. Through constant drops of disbelief. She turned her eyes on the pin in wordless appraisal and a fanged grin twisted her mouth, devious and impressed.

At the top, a fine plume etched in gold filigree gave the impression that it was a delicate piece, with innocent blue sapphires tapering smaller along the quill, but the shining pin erased this misconception. It was ten inches long.

When she reached for her purse, she found him already paying.

"Dear girl, paying is a gentleman's duty," he sniffed as he extracted a generous sum from a familiar wallet. Crowley's mouth fell open, an upward twitch at the corner.

"Fast-moving, aren't we?"

"I'm a deft pianist, I'll have you know."

He presented her with the pin and she held her hand out, but he recoiled.

"Bend down, dear, your hat is--well, _c'est marveilleux_ , but it's quite tall. As are you."

She blinked. Her face slackened.

_Take it, take whatever you can get._

In a slow curtsy, she presented herself to Aziraphale's careful discretion as he removed the black pin she had, lifted the end of her veil and gathered it to the side, the tip of the pin sliding through gauze and velvet and finally her hair, then out again. He arranged the veil so it looked comfortable, keeping his eyes off hers as they bore into him with bewitched fascination.

"There," he whispered, his breath trembling. She stood up, one brow raised. He slipped her the ersatz pin and offered his arm.

"The perfect gentleman, aren't you,” she almost hissed. The tightness in her chest restricted her voice as her arm wound around his, firm and greedy enough that he flinched, but said nothing. As soon as they left the shop, she tossed the old pin to the ground and didn't look back.

A decade before, a young lady faced with robbers on a trolley had defended herself and two other women against their assailants using only her hatpin. This precipitated the first time in Western history men had to regard women as actual people capable of self-defense, from which they immediately cloaked themselves in cognitive dissonance by calling them "old maids" who all had “a chip on their shoulder." It became a full-blown panic. The Hatpin Panic.

Crowley didn't complain to Aziraphale of an assault for the next five years. She rather bragged.

-

The thrill of petty violence was fleeting.

Not much later, buried in a trench and soaked up to her (his) knees in mud and ash and filth, the pin tipped out of his pocket like so many other mementos lost by the common soldier, and when Crowley told him, voice low and empty and roughened by scotch, he was met with an understanding silence.

The final months of 1918 were a blur. They didn't separate for all of November, holed up in the shop with the door barred and wine flowing like Dionysus' own fountain. Crowley slept for the first time in four years. The sofa molded to his shape and became his own, Aziraphale watching over him like his very own guardian angel, hardly taking his eyes off him and their faces close enough that he could read every furrow in his brow from the nightmares they'd faced. Too close. He resisted what he knew he had to.

He feared his name. He did not know what he would do, in his compromised state, were Crowley graced with whatever dream he liked best.

Of course, had Crowley any say in it, the visit might have sped things along. Aziraphale was inches away in too many ways. Torn open. War tends to do that when one has had no choice but to get involved.

As it was, he merely dreamed of possibilities, unaware that the angel's scent was not fabricated by his subconscious as so many times before, now his only guide through four years of unadulterated carnage. Hell's commendation remained crumpled in the bin. His visible sense of defeat confirmed something in Aziraphale, and he thumbed the little box with an expression Crowley would not see for another fifty years.


	8. A Pillar of Salt

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Arrangement takes on a new tone, and then another, and another. The theory of Evolution is thoroughly supported on the Infernal side, fear-inducing for the Divine.

**Milan, for Now a City-State in Its Own Right - 1349 CE**

Crowley’s nap, a well-earned nap, was interrupted by a loud but hesitant knock at his door. The inconsistent rhythm was harder to ignore than the cadence of the saw at his neighbor’s carpentry or the songs of the washerwomen down the tight city street. He slithered into a tight coil, burying himself in a pile of blankets in his dismal hovel in one of Milan’s seedier neighborhoods to try and ignore it, to no avail. He awoke groggy, irritated, and temporally adrift.

He had planned to wait out the Plague and the neighbors’ suspicion of his uncanny resistance to it for the next couple of decades, or however long humans enjoyed self-flagellation in the plaza by his favorite osteria (which was always crowded, these days, partly because people thought getting drunk could prevent the Plague, and partly for the dinner show). The Church was doing well enough alone inculcating fear amid supposed Divine punishment. Of course, Crowley knew Pestilence was anything but Divine. Or Infernal. Only the Poles seemed to grasp that regular bathing and clear drinking water were all they needed to keep them at bay; but enough of humanity, thoroughly bemused and disgusted by its self-awareness, has always been champing at the bit to get the Apocalypse running. The grim sight of the Horseman’s indifference certainly seemed to fulfill their prophecies.

Crowley didn’t yet know that he would, of course, face off with Pollution rather than Pestilence on the big day with the Big Four, but that’s putting the cart before the Horsemen. For now, he had to revert from his True Form, ideal for a long sleep, to his corporation--and all the thoroughly uncomfortable fashions of the day.

“Crowley, it’s _me_. Open up!”

No mistaking that voice.

He flung himself off of the straw mat with the speed of lightning, contact point (his shin) crashing down to the Earth (the table) with a terrible howl (his howl). This was surely heard at least three houses away, and most definitely beyond his door. Fast recovery. Limp to the tiny alcove that served as the foyer. Pretend, by Satan, that you’re as cool as he thinks you are.

At the last second, he miracled a few pockmarks sloppily disguised as moles, another dubious fashion of the time, lest his neighbors see him in anything like supernaturally perfect health. Perish his reputation.

“Coming, angel!” He scrambled, giving himself a once-over, a twice-over. Look presentable, suave. Reliability is success. This was in the early days of the Arrangement, the specifics already laid out over a cellar of wine a few centuries before, being that Aziraphale is always more approachable after a few bottles. That was generally when Crowley showed up, conscious of the fact or not.

His door creaked open with the practiced distrust of a civilian surrounded by decay. The calls to bring out the dead had already rung out across the city, and the reeking bodies of his neighbors would have to be picked up in the morning. Miracling them out would invite too many questions.

“Whasssit?” he yawned, stretching, effectively blocking the door to his sparse existence. Why he was embarrassed, he attributed to vanity. Not that Aziraphale might turn his nose up at the accommodation. Certainly not that he was hoping he wouldn’t.

“I have… _intelligence_.”

Aziraphale would almost never use this sentence to its full and accurate extent. Neither would Crowley, for that matter.

“Out with it, then.” He stood still, breathed carefully. The welcome scents of sage and rosemary and _Good_ invaded his empty home. The angel always flooded his senses. Evoked certain sensations.

_Your anointing oils are fragrant; your name is perfume poured out_

“There are things we need to discuss--privately, if you would be so kind.” Aziraphale gestured at the gloomy interior of Crowley’s far-too humble abode.

“Er, right.”

The door widened, he sneaked in, the guise of a monk barely excusing the fact that he’d favored the house of an outsider in suspiciously decent health amid the impending doom of the city.

He stretched, he watched Aziraphale’s unguarded back with tingling fascination, then gathered himself and tapped a candle alight. The rest of them trembled to follow suit. _All the better to see you, my pretty._ Plaster walls flickered into existence, creaking uneasily under the inspection of a holy being frankly because they’d gotten used to housing Evil, particularly Sloth, and the angel’s nervous energy made the beams contract like Augustus’ balls in the tepidarium. Crowley frowned and they righted themselves, one a little lower than the other.

Aziraphale pushed back his hood and paced. He paced by the table, by the mat, in front of the cold fireplace which Crowley lit with a thunderous frown. It hadn’t followed suit with the rest of the flames in the house. He would have a stern word with it, later.

“To what do I owe the pleasure?” he asked.

His vague annoyance had fled at the revelation of Aziraphale on his doorstep. Within ten feet of him. Promoted to control of his three neurons were confusion, trepidation, and delight, culminating in a siphon of water from his dry mouth to his sweaty palms as he watched the angel _exist_ in his space. He was a host. He was hosting Aziraphale. A demon, hosting the _Host_. He snorted, then caught himself when Aziraphale glanced at him. He probably wouldn’t have found it funny, he thought, not with his face looking like he’d lost an original Vedic text.

“... It’s about the Plague,” Aziraphale said, breaking eye contact. Crowley persisted, as Crowley often does.

“One would imagine,” he said, not a little glumly (this wasn’t a date, of course, no expectations, there).

“The Plague, and, erm, Pestilence.”

“The two go hand-in-hand.”

“Yes, but,” he halted. He considered the mat where Crowley had spent the better part of two years sleeping. Offense dawned, red and foreboding. His eyes grew hard, face stoic despite the furious tint to his cheeks. 

Crowley immediately tried to deflect, “Was thinking of heading up to Florence to quarantine, friend of mine went with a crowd of other nobles but they’re all under twenty. Couldn’t bother with the hormones...” The joke fell flat. Aziraphale stiffened distastefully, his lip trembled. Crowley opened a bottle of wine with his head down and poured them two cups. No matter the abundance, or lack thereof, of amenities in his hovel, there was always a shelf for wine and more specifically a chianti from a region he knew Aziraphale favored. The angel snatched his cup and downed it in chugs.

“Have you really been…” he said between gulps. It’s a rare moment when a sober Aziraphale doesn’t savor every particle to hit his tongue.

“Easy, easy, that vintage is hard to come by, these days,” Crowley said, transfixed.

 _“Sleeping?!"_ he gasped, spilling a little on the immaculate, if worn table.

Crowley tapped his fingers as though there was a follow-up. There was not.

“Not much going on aside from charlatan doctors and, _guh_ , mutilation parades.”

He refilled Aziraphale’s cup and sopped up the spillage with a rag, grateful that the angel was now taking sips instead of chugs. He still wouldn’t meet his eyes. Despite his thunderous response to Crowley’s inaction, Aziraphale was now minutely pacified by his adherence to Sloth while calamity overtook the city, as this meant he’d had no hand in it. Evil at rest, although true EVIL does not rest. He tried not to probe it too hard.

“I did stop by the Pope’s,” Crowley offered, wheedling out some sort of conversation, “told them fire burns the Plague away. Now they’ve got braziers burning, day in, day out like a Finnish sauna, but with all those robes, nevermind the smell,”

“Crowley!” Aziraphale erupted, slamming his cup down with Holy Wrath, or at least Holy Irritation. “People are _suffering_ , and I can’t..." He swiped his mouth on his scratchy sleeve, stared holes into the wall just past Crowley’s face. Crowley gulped. "Heaven won't lift a finger, even with the influx of souls they don't seem to register. I thought you… we could talk about..."

Our resident demon resisted a very demonic and unnecessary _told you so_. His fingers folded into a fist to settle his head uneasily atop them. He eyed the empty chair beside him and Aziraphale took the cue. Thick robes jostled, unsteady wood creaked. They drank, and drank. The fire crackled hesitantly, unsure whether breaking the silence would earn its master’s scorn, but in the presence of his only friend, (daresay?) he paid it no mind.

“... the Arrangement?” Crowley inquired gently.

“Mnh,” he grunted, followed by a sharp creak. Crowley looked down at Aziraphale’s cup and found the sides dented by angelic strength. Alarmed, he slowly sat up, but blue eyes flashed and caught him in a tractor beam. “I’ve been thinking. About the… yes. Our working together, what it means for humanity." A complex, entirely too pleasing array of thoughts and feelings overcame Crowley and he licked his lips like the taste of wine could chase them away. Quite the opposite, he’d learned over millennia.

“Haven’t seen you in a century.” _136 years, actually._ “Suddenly you want a favor… been thinking a lot, have you?” Crowley trotted the line between _Satan, keep him here another minute,_ and a very inappropriate, yet utterly honest sense of, _We work better together,_ a thought followed almost immediately by a whirlwind of, _Stay with me fuck me hold my hand._

“It’s only been…” Aziraphale began to correct, before he realized how long he'd ignored him. Not intentionally. England had been awfully busy getting invaded around the time. “Yes. Thinking a lot. In the grand scheme of things--”

“The _Plan?_ ” Crowley said, a smile barely crunched down between his teeth. Aziraphale grimaced.

“Yes, the Plan! It-it-it would have to include, you know, a bit of… wiggle room. For the good of all!”

“ _Wiggle room,"_ he said, now grinning hungrily, shivering when his unfaltering gaze was briefly returned. This was the most contact they’d had in too long, and here was Aziraphale at his door, hat in hand, asking to work together. Together-together, tête-à-tête. Next to each other. He wasn’t about to let him forget it (or squander it, himself, for that matter).

In the future, of course, Aziraphale wouldn’t have to ask, at all.

“I thought, maybe, it would be acceptable if we were to collaborate in a broader sense… not just doing each other’s work, I mean...” His lip caught on his teeth, somewhere between distress and distaste at the seeming weakness of an angel asking for outside help, nevermind that of a _demon,_ despite their increasing dependence on one another. A demon willing to help. A demon that, for whatever reason, he felt absolutely unthreatened by. Whatever reason. Nothing specific.

 _I don't even like you,_ he thought, although the state of Crowley's hovel made him wish he could offer a room at his comfortable home in London without crossing a line. Or a thousand lines.

“Are we… that is, you want to _lie?_ Even _more?”_ Crowley finished, tongue poking from between his teeth.

Aziraphale glared emptily, marmoreal with the pious disapproval of a statue of a saint.

“No, not ‘lie,’ we’re doing quite enough of that, already,” he snapped. “I want us to work towards a common goal. Put our heads together and figure this out.”

“ _In cahoots,_ would you say? Please, elaborate.” Crowley swallowed a groan, shifted his thighs. Careful, now, keep it under wraps. “Out with it. Proposition me.” _Set the pace, tell me how to do this,_ he didn’t think, since demons don’t desire mutuality, at least not in the way Crowley wanted. Slavered over. Entertained many a night when the seat next to him was empty, the stars too bright and cold. Possibility dangled above him like a rain cloud over Hell. Hold out your hands. Open your mouth.

As if sensing the scatter of his thoughts, Aziraphale spoke in a ru--

“The Arrangement doesn’t have to be just fudging the paperwork here and there, and for this we could both find a way to take credit, I’m sure, instead of, instead of,” he sputtered and frowned deeply at his cup, then looked up morosely. “Oh, help me think of something. I’m not good at this--not this, this ravaging, it’s not thwarting Hell, it’s not like working with you.” Crowley visibly shuddered and he paused, leaning slightly away. He took a quiet sip, the artifice of his steady hand and thin frown the projection of force of will. He ignored him, murmured over the rim, “We need to distract Pestilence, or at least offer people hope while they’re waiting for the ineffa--inevitable.” Crowley’s eyes narrowed like eyes do when reading something very, very closely. “Hope is essential and without it, we, that is, humanity,” he hastily corrected himself. After that, his thoughts were a little disorganized, clearly in need of a soundboard, a sympathetic ear, a _friend,_ if we’re letting that hope in like an awl to the spleen.

Crowley softened, as if that could lessen the blow. His fondness was malignant. He collapsed into his hand and sighed gently whenever their eyes connected, always fleeting, just enough to melt him a little more, but all at once, Aziraphale’s speech was done and their gazes levelled. Stillness. He froze under the weight of the angel’s expression, forlorn but resolute, like that of a general riding into a battle he knows he’ll lose.

He relented, indulged.

“Not quite our area, the Horsemen. I imagine it'll take awhile to come up with a plan." He topped off Aziraphale's cup and choked when he favored him with a smile, tired as it was. "You could, you ought to spend the night, at least."

The connotations whipped through him at the speed of light, the speed of potassium and iron ions fumbling between his handful of neurons as they struggled to grasp how far ‘together’ and 'spend the night' could go. Schroedinger's New Arrangement, fully loaded, both on the table and very much off it. Perhaps on the table if they couldn’t make it to the mat, a first time is typically a rush but he’d suffer the bruise on his tailbone if it got there the way he was thinking, he didn’t think, because thinking was currently torture.

Here it was, revealed in all agony. Not just possibility, but Probability. You can't take a picture of an electron in motion, you can only predict where it's likely to end up, and doubt is very much under the purview of demons. Not just collaboration, no, this was side-by-side, shoulder-to-shoulder, cheek-to-cheek, Effort-to-Effort.

_Stop that._

Curse their protons for keeping them apart. He crossed his legs, uncrossed them, adjusted his leggings as subtly as possible.

“I want to do it,” Aziraphale declared, angelically resolute.

Crowley’s mouth fell open, nearly unhinging as snakes are wont to do when very, very hungry.

“I want us to help each other, help them to ease some of the suffering,”

“And increase it, in places. You don’t get something for nothing. Although, it-it would be a pleas--a good move, that is,” he stumbled, suddenly tipping his cup of wine and cursing when it spilled onto his lap. Aziraphale waved his hand and the stain fled like so many townspeople amid the pandemic. A miracle that close to his crotch is a kind of proposition.

_Stop it._

Crowley cleared his throat, tried to keep on track. He knew the excuse of his own Head Office’s demands was an easily detectable farce. They were already impressed by the level of devastation in Europe and his proximity to it, resulting in commendations the like of which would drive Aziraphale off for yet more centuries, were he to take it out of context. Not that there was ever a good context to Hell’s designs. He considered his options, and with a bone-deep shiver that left him pinned to the chair, he surrendered to the ineffable reality that Aziraphale held the ace as though he’d carried it through the door. How foolish of him to think anything less, even for a moment. His wine drained low. He needed something to do with his lips before they ran away with the rest of him.

“Of course, I could be amenable to small things. Small miracles together would add up, we could get away with that much, at least. That’s all we’re supposed to do, anyway.” Aziraphale grimaced. He still looked as if he’d personally sent civilians to their death.

Crowley outsmarted his hands, eager to clasp one of his in some sort of mock-comfort when what was gnawing at his bones was the desire to jump another’s. Nothing more. Nothing to read into when he sighed, when he comforted, when he offered to miracle up a nice chaise-longue for the angel to relax into, thinking of that day in the Garden with an ache that rattled to the tips of his wings. Aziraphale at least paused before rejecting him.

It was a start. That blessed hope, a little fire in his belly that maybe in the next thousand years, maybe only five hundred at the rate things were moving, _maybe_ the sequel would finally come. He at least got the angel to agree to a night of drinking, to catch up.

**An Aside**

At this point in time, Crowley was doing a bang-up job of convincing himself his feelings were only Lust, and an even better job at sleeping his way through that cognitive dissonance--in both senses, one of which naturally counted as Sloth, and the other, involving a lot of blond/e stand-ins. Two. Count 'em, _two_ cardinal sins, and certainly not the symptoms of a self-destructive neurotic with a schoolyard crush. Anyway.

**Back to It**

Dawn was a few hours away, the neighborhood either asleep or dead. The conversation was quiet, decidedly more comfortable than when Aziraphale had arrived. Crowley perfectly molded into his chair, by no means obeying the physics of the human spine, comfortably drunk but not enough that he couldn’t pay attention as Aziraphale gave an excited summary of the legend of King Arthur. He’d purchased a copy as soon as it caught his eye. This quickly delved into an in-depth review. He also spoke eagerly of the establishment of Queen’s College in England. Crowley was overcome by a feeling of nostalgia. Homesickness without a home.

He smiled at the sound of his voice, occasionally offered commentary, but by the time he finished, Crowley had nothing to say. They let the quiet settle between them. It was Aziraphale who broke it, his voice low,

“What, then… what do you think we should, we should do?” he slurred, a flush from a casket of wine, and hunched over his cup like he could dive into it. Remove the robe, for one, wouldn't want that to stain--the unders, too, while he's at it.

Crowley gulped.

“What would you do? I'll assist any way I can,” he said, as though it needed saying. “How may I be of ssservice?”

Aziraphale winced, eyes flashing, a bolt from the blue. Coup de foudre. Crowley lost his sense of time.

“A reprieve. Not miraculous recoveries, nothing Head Office would catch onto, but something… something to restrain the Plague's effects. A preventative, not a cure, per se. Something drastic, even.”

Crowley thought for a minute. Time dilation cared nothing for what a ‘minute’ meant in that moment since his mind was inundated with every past meeting between them, every potential future. The angel wrung his hands in his lap. He was instantly transported back to the Ark, to Eden, to every other instance where Aziraphale’s cautious doubt and indomitable love had enraptured him. All succeded, of course, by his constant wilting to the angel’s will. Rome. Crowley looked down, caught a flash of silver and breathed a little too fast. God had thrown a boulder down his path and never expected him to outrun it. At least She’d got the ball rolling.

“Give me a moment to think,” he said, dragging out their meeting as long as possible. “In the meantime, more wine?”

 _"Please,"_ Aziraphale whined, gazing at his cup as if it were the solution to all his problems. Angelic heartache leaked through his fidgeting, the absentminded chewing of his lips. Crowley’s demonic instincts were intrigued by it, at war with the rest of him.

“You're alright,” he said. He smiled a demon’s smile and Aziraphale’s hackles rose like the glare of the sun on another day’s call for the dead. His eyes steeled. Crowley clenched his fist, his teeth. “W-We’ll think of something. Two minds are better than one, right?”

Of course, in regards to these particular minds, he was wrong.

-

The ensuing extremism of Milan’s attempts to curtail the Plague would strain their relationship for another hundred years, in which Crowley performed the odd Good miracle without knowing whether Aziraphale did the same for him. He imagined it as spite, although he couldn’t quite figure the logic. Fight fire with fire, he thought vaguely, watching one of the city’s magnificent estates burn to the ground along with its protesting inhabitants. The phrasing there was a little off the mark.

His attentions were partly diverted by the spectacle of Aziraphale scurrying away from him in a mixture of shame and disgust. That pinged a little close to home, Mommy issues notwithstanding.

Crowley _had_ technically suggested purification by fire. What was intended as a clever prank on the Pope spread like… like wildfire. They had succeeded, he supposed. Fire takes everything with it, be it the Plague or the carrier rats. Aziraphale wanted simple quarantines to take care of the issue; neither demon nor angel had meant for them to become bonfires. The magistrates had already agreed on more severe measures by the time they sobered up, four days lost to drunken debates while the city went up in smoke. Aziraphale had spent the night, several nights, although none of them in the context that haunted Crowley's every thought (and perhaps distracted him from finding a less massacre-y solution).

He shrugged his shoulders and found them too heavy to quite lift back up. The Arrangement was evolving, however rocky the path. Point one for his causes. He planned to sleep for the next decade, wondered if it was possible amid screams on par with Hell or worse. An unnecessary sacrifice, but a sacrifice, all the same.

Aziraphale fleeing him. That was sure to lurk in his subconscious, if he really slept as long as he intended, but not only that. He, too, had to walk away from the consequences of their joining. At least for the moment.

**The Bookshop - 1967, after a Particularly Emotional Exchange**

Aziraphale poured himself a drink. He sat in his favorite chair to read, but the words failed to penetrate his thoughts. He stood. He sat. He walked to the window and glared at prospective customers but only issued a vague aura of solemnity which nevertheless deterred them from entering. Normally, he would've counted that as a success.

His sink, where he’d transformed tap water into something unspeakable--literally unspeakable, not a word of it passed between them since that paper burned in a pond at St. James--shined from the corner of his eye. His tartan thermos, conspicuously missing from the picnic basket still on the counter.

He’d made a choice and he stood by it, whether it was the Right one or the Wrong one. Offering a demon his own chance at _reducing_ the demonic ranks, well, that’s on the mark with what’s Good, but it didn’t feel Right, and it Never Would. At least not in the context he suspected. His conscience wobbled, since if it were technically _Good_ , capital 'G,' there was no need to fret, and if Crowley were right, then he may indeed have saved him from a fate worse than death. If harm were to come to Crowley...

He had to stop thinking in personal terms.

A Principality offers guidance rather than force. He was meant to direct his battalion, not plunge headfirst into battle like a common soldier. In service to Heaven, he was still of middling rank, it wasn’t up to him to make decisions or declarations of any consequence. For instance, the Lord had not utilized him, in Her infinite wisdom, when Mary was to turn a one-night-stand into the birth of the Savior. No, She’d chosen Gabriel, presumably for his forthright manner. Still a choice that rang a little off-key, like a choir boy's voice cracking in the midst of _Agnus Dei_. Of course, Aziraphale now held his own unique position amid the ranks of the angels, technically a covert operative. His roles were muddled.

He didn’t know quite where he stood when he stood by Crowley. 

No matter how he felt, nothing had changed. He was quite sure Crowley was still alive, no, nothing had changed because nothing could change between them, not anymore than they had, at least. He would put his foot down, come their next meeting (although it seemed he was on the gas pedal for once, didn't it?). This didn’t mean what he thought it meant, certainly not what he felt it meant. But here he was, feeling things he shouldn’t. Cautiously skirting his hopes.

_You go too fast for me._

Crowley attracted his thoughts like a black hole, winking his fate from Heavenly will to a dark place, an inescapable place. Aziraphale was determined to avoid the event horizon and still found his mind in helpless orbit.

They'd had good times. Better than this, certainly.

He sat, crossed his legs. Nibbled his lip in a way he’d seen Hemingway do after a sleepless night of too much coffee and a Death in the Afternoon at _La Rotonde_.

Absinthe. _La Fée Verte_ , la Rue de la Roquette. The height of l’Art Nouveau and Crowley’s style with the black sash that nipped in, the gentle curve of her corset more serpentine even than her True Form. Sinuous silk gown clinging. The crown of a gold pin whose purchase Aziraphale had cleverly forgotten once lost, although not the look on her face as he'd presented it, nor (his) face when he reported where it had gone. _That_ face, eyes hazy, horror setting in but let’s not compare that to the present. Not that he can escape Crowley’s other faces. Faces just for him, always turned on him.

That rouge on her lips that never smeared! Not even when they’d been drinking for hours, days, talking about all manner of things, anything, anything at all to have her close enough to keep an eye on (as Heaven commanded) or two (as he resisted and occasionally failed). Especially that night. Especially tonight.

_You go too fast for me._

Gaslight had carved sharper hollows at the cut of her cheekbones, flickering over golden eyes in an age where such suggestive illumination came at the expense of terrible explosions. Running electric next to gas. Who’d thought of that? Humans typically make mistakes before they know what to do, and even so, others’ lessons rarely cross the minds of fools.

He sighed, uncrossed his legs, poured another drink.

Time passes. Things change in subtle increments. With the most recent victory in Parliament, the two of them could even fraternize in their male forms without the raise of a brow or a whip.

A mere hypothetical!

He gripped the arm of his chair. All his favorite little clubs had been celebrating for days. Crowley had once indulged him, there.

_Anywhere you want to go._

Drinking together. Dancing, even. Shooing away anyone who might insert himself, unwanted, and leaving unsaid why they were there together, came together, Aziraphale hardly hiding his amusement and delight in a place where neither of them had to keep his distance in dancing: in dancing, a reprieve from the dance.

Ohhhh, but the feel of Crowley’s waist under his hand. ‘45, was it? VE Day, the celebration as intoxicating as wine and the dance floor packing them together with the excuse of a lifetime, closing the gap to mere inches, then centimeters, then breathless laughter pushing their chests together. Covert execution of a miracle to clear the floor, only a few feet, to dip him low and savor the shock. The blush on his face. It was as good as a kiss, better, and everyone had cheered them on before kissing one another, themselves. A respectful parting. The distance returned as he’d cleared his throat and Crowley averted his eyes to the bar. Then, something remarkable.

A night’s drive with the headlights on for the first time in years. They hadn’t gone anywhere, it was a closed loop. A drive for the journey. He’d suggested it, himself, and now, look where they were.

He’d always set the steps. Oh, he knew. Crowley followed his lead as if mesmerized, however bumbling or tipsy or ill thought out, he followed, the faithful Fallen, falling behind him. Nature of the beast. Of course he _knew_. The Blitz had hammered that in along with the shell-shock of an extra two decades of deciding how to proceed, what rhythm they were to move to with Crowley's adherence taken for granted, a hard thing to pass up when one has doubts, the temptation of something one cannot doubt, even armed with cognitive dissonance as Aziraphale tried his best to be. An angel, through and through.

Space, then. Space to keep himself in check. A contra dance rather than a waltz, they hadn’t really touched since then, although the absence of physicality rendered eye contact a spell of its own. Avoid, avoid, _avoid_.

Crowley, of course, had begun wearing glasses very early on, although Aziraphale could alway tell, could rein him in with the smallest glance, a power he exercised to the same extreme as with any other earthly enjoyment. Moreso. Achingly so. He never had to take a tolerance break from wine. No sabbaticals from sin, not when you’re an angel trying to fit in, except in the precise space you’re drawn to.

Not a lot to be done about that.

He reached into his pocket and swiped his finger over the little box nestled there, stroking the smooth surface. The middle distance is interesting. You can be anywhere you want to be, or with anyone. Space travel, time travel, omnipresence that costs nothing, and in Aziraphale’s case, it was a thousand individual seconds. Glances. Near-misses and squandered reveals. A thousand years ago. An hour ago. A very tentative future. But in any case, it wasn't now.

_You go too fast for me._

When someone looks into the middle distance, they’re never looking at _now,_ particularly because he was staring at the couch, and if he came back to now, it would be empty.

And then, of course, it was. He was. He was here, alone but for the drink in his hand, pulling his cravat loose at some memory or another, it was all a mess. Rather than the study, he walked to the kitchen. He turned on the light to find the old picnic basket on the counter where he'd left it, accusingly empty, and sat next to it as company and drank, and drank. Quiet, emptied. Exhausted.

It’s not sad when an immortal drinks alone because an immortal is usually Alone, capital 'A,' even in a city of more than six and a half million. It would not be a Long Night. Nights are nothing, mere seconds in the span of sixty centuries. He'd spent plenty of nights watching, guiding as an angel does in the old days when angels actually did although of course, inevitably, a certain someone would interrupt him with an invitation casually yet carefully extended, a night or month of nights lost to liquor and wine. Sometimes sullen centuries in between.

No, nights are nothing. A night is nothing. He would not blink if it passed with nothing more to do, and nothing more to say.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I promise you, this isn't whump. It's only that idiots tend to make themselves sad, a practice in which I am a veteran.


	9. So You Think You Know What Comes Next?

**The Bookshop - New Years, Some Forty Years before Armageddon**

“Angel, if it takes you this long, it may as well take 365 days and _you asked!_ It’s literally only once a year--”

“I’m coming, I’m coming,”

Aziraphale tip-tapped down the staircase, huffing past towers of books leaning more than Bonanno Pisano, himself, could accomplish. Pisa. A building in love with the Earth slowly sauntering from the sky, devised by an architect whose descendants presumably built the Dale Dike in Louisiana. Not that Crowley would be around for that one, Baton Rouge’s superior jazz and cocktqils

Never mind that, don't pretend to look anywhere but angel. Smiling, shuffling, awaiting-your-approval angel.

“How do I look?”

Aziraphale puffed up his chest and adjusted his bowtie, clapped his heels together as if on cue in a musical. Crowley sniffed, brushing at his velour shirt.

“Like an academic who’s lived in a cave. It’s almost a new decade, _four_ new decades, and they’ll not hold the celebration for us.”

Aziraphale scowled.

“It’s _New Years_ , looking nice is tradition. I’ll have you know, I just bought--”

“1934, I was there. When the war hit, you passed out your ration cards like candy to every sap in the street and I had to miracle some when you wanted chocolates. That’s that,” he wriggled his finger at his own open collar, “stain, that brown smudge.”

Aziraphale’s hand flew to his chest, mouth dropped open and looking positively scandalized.

“My dear, you have to _tell_ me these things, I’ve been wearing this for years now, and the impressions I must’ve made, _oh_ , the Kennedys! Scandals aside, what they must have _thought--_ ”

He bumped into a stern hand, chest pressed back. He watched it, transfixed as the fingers walked up his collarbone, nipping in at the base of his neck and then, _flick_ , the stain drifted away like a cloud of steam. With another _flick_ , his bowtie was perfectly straightened, the tug of the motion barely pulling on his flushing nape.

“There,” Crowley quipped, glancing over his glasses to survey his work, “had to look at that for the past forty years. How often do you look in a mirror? Do you _own_ one? Mercury, maybe? Enough for the maker to go mad like the good old days. Not about to fall for vanity, not above anything else.”

Aziraphale didn’t move. Crowley anticipated, a moment passed. Shuffling feet ever closer to the door, almost dancing.

“Are you--can we-- _angel?_ "

So many words so cleverly bypassed.

“Yes, erm,” he stumbled, touched his collar, “let’s. But not too fast.” Crowley stiffened, Aziraphale's heartbeat quickened. “It’s not even a mile away, no need for a lead foot.”

This was not the first time they’d met since ‘67, and they were each privately striving to ensure it wasn’t the last. They were wary. They were going to be seen in public. Crowley practically jumped out of his skin at Aziraphale’s tense smiles, wondering when he’d be kicked out, Aziraphale praying that things would return to normal even after the boundaries he’d so firmly set.

(And promptly ignored.)

A hand hovered over his lower back and recoiled like a viper when he jumped. He tottered through the door into the December cold, and just before he exclaimed he’d forgotten his coat, he’d have to go back for it, it draped over his shoulders. Crowley edged past him, down the steps, sleek and swagger down to his toes. He called over his shoulder,

“Don’t forget to lock up! Not like anyone lifts a book...” he descended into muttering, opening the passenger’s side of the Bentley.

Aziraphale felt the weight of the coat, the weight of the key in his pocket. He locked the door with perfunctory motions but remained on the step, watching Crowley. That… moustache, twitching in the cold.

“It’s bloody freezing, angel, get in!”

They drove to the Bank at a negotiated sixty miles per hour in the midst of a parade. Crowley parked and opened his door again, they walked along the water, seeking a good spot to watch the fireworks when one miraculously appeared and, shortly thereafter, two chairs and a basket of champagne with a small cloth over it.

“Tartan,” Crowley muttered. Muttering rather a lot.

There was something behind it, something pressing his shoulders close together like a startled cat, like he was waiting for the next strike in a fight. For now, Aziraphale resisted thinking of when it started.

“Sit,” he commanded. Aziraphale may have huffed, but he accepted the invitation. Despite the tension, he soon found a very soft, warm, very _black_ blanket across his lap.

“Thank you, my dear,” he said, smiling, “very _kind_ of you.”

“Zzzip it,” Crowley replied through his teeth. Those four-letter words really did get to him. "Not like it means anything, good intentions. Path to Hell and all that, the humans say it’s paved with good intentions.” He looked askance at Aziraphale, who nearly miracled a particular thermos full of hot cocoa before he remembered where it was. “Not quite on the money, not a gentle road down.”

“Mm,” he hummed, a whine in his ears he couldn’t pretend was the crowd.

“No path at all, no roads, highways, byways.” Crowley drank, suppressed a hiccup by beating his chest. “Not as if they’re floating through the air and all. No, when you, when we Fell,” his self-correction was cold as the December air between them, “no air resistance. Like a bloody… if it rained good intentions at all, it’d be a mighty _flop_.” his arms drew wide, but not wide enough to touch A. “Discorporate the First Circle, on th’spot.”

More and more people crowded around, pointing up at the bridge and hollering for their friends and family over the din of thousands upon thousands of partygoers. The group to the left did shots off an ice chest. The family behind them held their children up high, told them to touch the bridge for good luck, and laughed. Humans upon humans, celebrating the New Year together and yet circled in tight clusters against the waves of strange onlookers, carrying all the same chairs and all the same blankets while shivering in the cold. In the morning, the place would be empty of anything but trash.

Aziraphale spread his legs a little, warming under the blanket, and knocked his knee against Crowley’s. The demon leaned away. He rifled through the basket and then resumed his quiet pose as though he’d needed nothing at all. His shoes poked out under his own blanket, clamped together, his legs crossed.

“I rather miss the stars, you don’t see them in the city, these days,” Aziraphale said, disliking this heaviness between them. He recalled great plumes of smoke, a city decimated, the guiding light of the stars obscured. "Funny how they used to, to believe falling stars were…"

He coughed lightly at a nearby couple speaking words of praise and hope and dotting their promises with kisses and yet more sweet nothings. Even by his standards, it was a bit much for the moment, although he didn’t pinpoint why. Crowley ignored them, ignored him. He drank sullenly, straight from the bottle, his glass sitting unused and feeling slightly betrayed in the basket.

“Another year,” he gasped over the rim, lips shining with champagne before he licked them clean. Aziraphale waited for him to continue and found nothing in the following moment. The back of his neck prickled. His collarbone.

“My dear,” stage whisper, “what’s on your--”

“Ah, they’re starting. Tolja I had to speed. Never would have gotten here, listening to you nag.”

He bristled, but it wasn’t meant to start a bickering match. Unless it was? Bait. It was meant to fill the silence with something, anything other than the Cause.

" _Five!"_ Crowley shouted.

A reticence less peaceable than a ceasefire.

" _Four!_ "

The suspension of questions Aziraphale refused to ask.

" _Three!_ "

Not that he had an idea of what the right one was, what would break down this wall.

" _Two!_ "

_Do you still have it? Are you going to...?_

" _One!_ "

The words died on the tip of his tongue to slide back with a bitter swallow and the champagne failed to clear his pallet. The tip of the bottle clinked against his glass.

“To the next one!” Crowley yelled to be heard above the crowd.

Ah.

Perhaps he didn’t need to worry. At least, not yet.

-

The drive back was remarkably slow by Crowley’s standards. He even respected a roadblock for the festivities, taking a detour that cost him precious _minutes_ and confused the Bentley to no end. The ride was almost silent, barely peppered with off-key quips from the driver, solemn hums from the passenger. It had become quite clear to the both of them that this Thing had nowhere to go, that they had to invite it in, ask _questions_ like a damned interrogation, and nothing, nothing at all, is more terrifying to an angel than asking too many questions and getting burned. Perhaps even worse for someone who knew the pain.

So Crowley tried, to the extent his fear would allow him. Always skirting the subject, keeping a not-so subtle distance at all times and even avoiding the clutch when he could, to the Bentley’s objection. SoHo. A miraculous parking spot. The deafening sound of an engine cutting.

He hesitated, then swiveled towards him,

“If you’re, if you--”

“Would you like to come in for a drink?” Aziraphale sped past his words, not looking at him, hand already on the door.

Crowley tilted his chin up, tone clipped, “Love to.”

The angel slammed the door to give them something to bicker about. Maybe Crowley’s method of filling the air was what they needed to get the ball rolling, so to speak. Rolling where? Onto the next phase in an Arrangement he realized, thirteen years ago, would _not stop changing_. That made it seasonal. That gave it a timeline and, necessarily, an end. Quite possibly Crowley's end.

He had to stop thinking.

He _had_ to keep drinking.

“Get thee behind me,”

“Foul fiend, got it, first round’s on you. And the next one, and the next one, and the next--”

Aziraphale tucked his coat over a chair.

“Just because I stock more wine than liquor doesn’t mean... I’d be perfectly fine going to yours…”

Although he wouldn’t. For whatever reason, it didn’t seem like Neutral Ground. 99% of the past six thousand years, Crowley had come to him, if they hadn’t simply met by chance. It wasn’t as if reversing the tradition for a nightcap would be an extraordinary event, but it was, and Crowley didn’t bite. He sailed by without request or invitation to the wine rack in the kitchen, and bypassed that for the reserve under a counter that was not feasibly as long as it was.

“Not the Château Lafite!”

Belated. The pop of a cork. The deed was done.

Aziraphale sighed. He bustled into the parlor and began arranging things: Crowley’s favorite pillows, the blanket he would inevitably squirm out of, coasters, coasters.

“Angel." A glass held aloft passed between their fingers without the barest touch. _Clink_. Sip. “What are you doing with my pillows?”

Aziraphale set his glass on a coaster and primly fluffed, with an extra slap.

“ _My_ pillows, dear boy." Anything younger than a few months was decidedly Crowley's given his sensitivity to trends, while anything older than Methuselah was under Aziraphale's purview. "I’m setting them up just the way you like.”

Crowley remained frozen by the kitchen door. He nearly reached for his, for _something_ , and dived around the table at the last second, taking the long way to avoid any more touching. With a calculated truce, they settled into their respective spots, Crowley on the armrest of the couch, and Aziraphale in his favorite chair (which was, he wouldn't admit, whichever chair was nearest the couch).

“My dear,” he began warmly, sinking into their routine, _You don’t need to wear those in front of me_ , he nearly said, as he always said of Crowley’s glasses, but the words didn’t fit in his mouth, and they didn’t pair with the wine. Instead, what he said, far too gently in accompaniment with the connotation, was, “Let me see your eyes.”

Crowley was looking at him. Glasses or not, he assumed Crowley’s eyes were on him, because they were usually on him. He acted as though he hadn’t heard, but poorly. His hand twitched when he hefted the glass to his lips.

“Crowley.”

The demon reluctantly obeyed.

He sniffed as he slid them off, looked at them, stuffed them in his pocket and then whipped them out for another glance, a brief shine. Perhaps he hadn’t been looking at Aziraphale. Perhaps he’d looked only as far as the lenses, themselves.

“Cold out,” he said. He cleared his throat.

The glasses returned to his pocket. His perch on the arm of the couch was precarious for him as it was for the ancient piece, but Aziraphale had long since stopped asking him to treat it like a friend.

_I don’t have friendsss, angel._

“I disagree,” Aziraphale smiled, “it was perfectly warm under your blanket.”

His smiles were normally a magnet for Crowley’s gaze, but those amber eyes drifted everywhere but him. It began, very quickly, to annoy him.

“Thank you for that, by the way. Forget my own head, next.” He squinted, half-remembering something, then brushed it off with another sip. He smacked his lips. “1980.”

“Yup,” Crowley’s lips popped.

“Hard to believe it's been one hundred and fifty years since I found this place.”

“I found it.”

“I’m sorry?” Aziraphale’s glass leaned against the armrest. Crowley kicked his knees up on the couch, settling into it almost defensively, arms crossed.

“I found this place,” he drank, “was going--going to make a nice home for myself. Home away from home.”

He’d once described the pit cleared for him in Hell, which Beelzebub assured was too good for him, but which was the only one left since Crowley had arrived late. He’d been drinking with Aziraphale. Zhe had already handed out the worst pits to those whom zir wrath prioritized, and Crowley, having no title or particular tiff with zir, was an afterthought.

“I only let my accountant or… whomever, sell it when I saw it was you.”

“You…” Aziraphale began, but his tongue disagreed with him and switched directions. It demanded more wine. He relented. “Why couldn’t you have just,”

“Just handed it over?” he reclined against a shelf. “Money might be meaningless to us, angel, but I couldn’t just _hand it over_ ,”

“Well whyever not?”

He had the sense they were swimming towards another boundary here, one he, himself had long since set and yet which now seemed as lost as buoys in a storm. When the day cleared--when his head cleared--he would find his bearings again, but he couldn’t trust himself at the moment to remember. Or rather, some part of him refused to make the effort.

“Would’ve been a strange gift, for one.”

“I was looking for a place!”

“It needed to be yours, I’d have had no hand in it, otherwise. You've done, you've made it a better home than I could've.”

Crowley set down his glass as though he intended to stop drinking, but it clattered, and as he righted it, his gaze locked with Aziraphale’s.

“Oh, don’t give me that,” he pleaded.

“What? I’m, I’m sorry to _complicate_ things,” Aziraphale started, and stopped, and quickly realized he couldn’t take it back.

Partygoers still swarmed the streets and shouted outside, pulled crackers, blew kazoos. It was a strange symphony to accompany the feeling in his parlor, the thickening of his pulse as it warred with the sound to collapse his eardrums. He felt like he might combust. He briefly wondered what the paperwork would look like.

“You don’t… complicate things, angel,” Crowley explained in the way that people do when they have to lie to avoid the consequences. “I’m sorry. You’re a pleasure to--I like it. I like it here. What you’ve done with it.” He was flushed down to his chest, gesturing at the clutter, the mess, the comfortable chair Aziraphale increasingly wished would swallow him whole. “Never would’ve thought to have… hobbies, I s’pose. Never thought to fill my life with much of anything ‘cept work. Getting away from work. Sleeping.”

Spending time together. Watching the stars together. Pointing out the worst musicals of the year, together.

“You have your plants,” Aziraphale offered vaguely.

“They know their place.”

Aziraphale didn’t see a way out of this. He saw in Crowley’s eyes that he didn’t, either, and on a profound level, far beyond their understanding, crushed in by the tension in that parlor as if passing the event horizon, so, too, did the Narrator realize there was no proper way for all of them to escape.

Drinking in silence may as well be drinking alone, but drinking in Silence means something heavier. Silence that is not an absence makes a terrifying presence, company to any foreboding subject that demands the utmost restraint in discussing. Close company to fear. Crowley and Aziraphale were so restrained that little sounds began to emerge as if defying Fate, from the tapping of demonic fingers on a shaking knee, to the increasingly loud thrum of an unnecessary heart in angelic ears, Silence was perhaps not doing its best job, but it prevailed nonetheless in delaying conversation so thoroughly, Aziraphale panicked that Crowley would leave without a word.

This, of course, did not even touch on the demon’s own miserable anxieties. He wanted to sleep for a decade. Maybe two. Perhaps their moods, their relationship, had grown to the point of being infected. Perhaps Crowley’s mere demonic presence was finally starting to pull Aziraphale into a catastrophic orbit and, perhaps, as he feared most, this meant an alteration to the Arrangement that could only push them further apart, like two binary stars torn forever into space.

Although Silence persists, like gravity, it is a force easily broken.

“My dear boy,” Aziraphale bravely attempted, “... velour? _Really?”_

Crowley started, sipped, and smiled with all the grace of a sinner pardoned on his deathbed.

“Oh please, with that damnable _tartan_ bow tie.” He pointed, finger flicking, and the angel touched his heart in mock offense, playing along. “Don’t get me _started_.”

He hummed, his smile returning, hand dipping to his pocket as he shifted back into his chair.

“Please do.”

**The Bookshop - Present Day**

A delightful lack of customers aside, Aziraphale is nevertheless having one of the worst days of his life. Worse even than the previous day, a day on which his flagging hope conceded that Crowley was not about to walk through his door. Not to bring a gift, no chocolates or wine, nor the suggestion of lunch or a show or a walk in the park. Just himself. And he is denied.

Time apart is, in the grand scheme of things, not uncommon in their relationship. It’s just that they’d rather been attached at the hip at every chance since averting the End of Days, whether on the bus, in Crowley’s apartment, in Yemen… He dances around the subject of the ring, but circling anything defines a most obvious center, something even the planets could attest to. Thing is, planets don’t have to Think about it, they just Do. It had come so easily, obtaining the ring, pretending he hadn’t, absorbing Crowley’s despair and affection and fear, promising that he shared it all. Would share it. That anything that hurt Crowley, hurt him.

He wonders whether it works the other way around. It must. Clever, but stupid. If he’s thought something like that, then the opposite must be true. He’s only recently acquainted himself with his own stupidity. Crowley had had a mostly merciful hand in it.

Where is he? Is he safe? Whom is he _with?_ He’s out of his damned mind with worry and panic and an overwhelming, undeniably agonizing sense of _doubt_. Worse than doubting the Plan, his place in life. Crowley is his place. For all he loves his collection, the shop may as well be empty as he dithers and pauses and lavishes much of his attention on the middle distance, sacred temple of the distracted and the desolate. When all that’s left to his life is the Arrangement, (or whatever it could be called, now, if it can be called anything) Crowley’s absence from it means it has no course. Aziraphale’s very life lacks course. Meanings, explanations, answers have all stalled and now perch above a chasm roiling with every doubt he has, all of them to do with Crowley.

“Where’s the tall one?”

He shrieks, knocks over a few of his less-precious books and scrambles to rescue them from the floor.

Azrael stands, a full foot shorter than he, waiting expectantly for yet another _answer_. She glances at his crooked tie, collapsed shoulders, the wild, covetous spark in his eyes at the mere mention.

She sighs, “You don’t know, do you? Typical.” The rest, she mumbles. It’s only when she reaches for it that Aziraphale notices the grey valise sitting at her feet. “Well, giving it to you is as good as giving it to him, anyone could see. Or did.” She looks around, as though Crowley might pop out at any second in a low-effort prank.

“What is--”

“Payment, of course.”

She opens the valise, but when Aziraphale looks inside, he sees Nothing. A Nothingness in Creation, itself, the kind of gap that God must have hastily patched over when She crafted everything else.

“Erm, what is the normal ‘payment’ for uh…”

He doesn’t want to think too hard about what they did.

“Although HE is unlimited in certain aspects, not everything’s on the table. However, HE thought you might enjoy this, given your um.” She looks around, bemused. “Hobby.”

“What?”

She squints.

"Really doesn’t seem fair,” she sighs, opening the valise, “the skinny one probably won’t get as much out of it, but it’s not my fault if you two are having a lovers’ quarrel.”

Aziraphale blushes a shade of red not previously documented in human existence.

“Not my concern. Here you are,”

On the counter, she places a handwritten manuscript, barely stitched together with leather straps stiffened by age. Aziraphale pales, another tone that escapes human comprehension, although perhaps not that of the mantis shrimp, which the Lord deemed worthy of an extra thirteen possible basic colors.

“Is that…”

“Anything that passes, passes to HIM. Quite a backlog of decay, but it’s not as if there aren’t certain pockets within Creation, or rather without, that can host them. Why, the Library of Alexandria…”

Aziraphale would normally briefly lose his mind over the thought that the greatest library on Earth had survived in some dimension (along with a few of his favorite epics and scientific studies, the loss of which precipitated a drunken rant against Caesar in mixed company). Gratitude escapes him. His face is frozen. There, freed from destruction, called back from the flames that swallowed it, sits Agnes Nutter’s much-anticipated sequel. A sequel he had no idea existed before this moment.

“May I, erm,”

Azrael steps back but soon grimaces as, much in the history of the series, the book’s initial reading is foisted off on its distributor.

“No, no, no. Why don’t, ah, that is... you delivered it. Would you do the honor?”

She expresses no interest, perhaps even negative interest, in delivering anything more than the book itself. Nevertheless, Azrael dutifully opens the first page to scan the single prophecy at its center.

“ _Away with ye_ …” she mutters. A smile cracks her thin lips, and then a great laugh like the collapse of a castle, like the fall of kings, and her wings, black and carved with stars, emerge and cradle her into another dimension with a final cackle and the smell of ozone.

This knocks over a stack of manuscripts Aziraphale cherished for each having the same typo in every copy, as not the writer, the editor, nor the publisher knew the difference between ‘discreet’ and ‘discrete,’ as in, “Aziraphale’s shriek was not discreet by means of containing his shock,” whereas, “This prophetic edition is discretely meant for him,” since the first entry calls him out in Agnes Nutter’s favorite way:

_Away with ye, employee of Neutralitee_

_And leave this booke and shoppe of bookes at once,_

_For nowhere else shall ye fynde a Principalitee_

_As this in dyre straits, and such a dunce._

“Well,” he chokes a little, returning to himself, “there’s really no call for that.”

Not only breaking with her usual pattern of unrhymed verse, Agnes also added a flourish of her pen that, on closer look, seems like a small arrow directly guiding the reader to the next page. A devil's tail, if we're admitting a Freudian slip. Compelled to read, Aziraphale turns the page and immediately expects, since he seems to be her favorite subject of ridicule, yet another insult, but his eyes are immediately glued to the words and his teeth to his nails as he reads on.

_Five trolles’ houses shall there be, and foure emptye. Not tolle nor queue abydes our daimon, with hair and lippes of redde, and onward shall he ryde as fyne as thredde, amid the screams of other chariots._

“Crowley,” he worries his lip, “where are you?”


End file.
